


dreamers, they never learn

by thinkatory



Category: Hannibal (TV), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Crossover, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Gen, M/M, Mostly Gen, Platonic Relationships, Rape/Non-con Elements, Shippy Gen, The Beholding (TMA), The Flesh (TMA), The Hunt (TMA)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:34:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25993753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/pseuds/thinkatory
Summary: Tobias Budge does not die. He flees across the ocean, called by powers he cannot comprehend. He's found a purpose at last.Unless it's stopped, the Flesh will play their symphony to the tune of the end of the world.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Will Graham & Abigail Hobbs, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, jonathan Sims & Will Graham
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17
Collections: Crossworks 2020





	dreamers, they never learn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



> A few notes:  
> \- I bent the timeline here. As you'll see, this is set between Mason Verger's nose-eating and the beginning of Mizumono for Hannibal, and in early S4 for TMA. So, Hannibal has not realized Freddie is alive, there's no Daisy, and Martin is embedded with Peter.  
> \- There is some graphic material in here near the end. Note the tags, I mean it. The majority of the fic is extremely gen and without such things! But I did not hold back on the whump once things really went to hell in this fic, because these characters are incredibly fun to inflict terrible things upon. I hope it's both sufficient and also not too much.  
> \- I really tried to keep this gen - the majority of the fic is more & than / - but the (relatively) canon relationships sneaked in despite my best efforts. Again: largely the premise is gen casefic with a side of ship, so I tagged both gen and m/m, sue me.  
> \- Oh, and, I realize this is long(ish) - take your time finishing it, I will not be fussed.  
> \- Title from "Daydreaming" by Radiohead.

_Dreamers, they never learn / beyond the point of no return_  
_Then it's too late / the damage is done, the damage is done_  
\- Radiohead, "Daydreaming"

* * *

Jon looks over the pages, rapid scribbled text that – of course – he can perfectly make out, a dashed off, clear attempt to exorcise the memories as quickly as possible with the tip of a biro against lined paper. He doesn't need to look over them to have a sense of their content, but it's an old habit.

He begins the recording.

"Statement of Angela Beckett, on the events leading to the death of her brother.

"I don't really know where to start, so I'm just going to start with my brother, Paul, because that's the point of me coming here. Paul's – Paul _was_ two years younger than me, and we were thick as thieves as soon as we got over petty childish bickering in our mid-teens. I couldn't tell you when that all changed, but I remember a lot more good times than bad ones, and I don't even think the bad times were all that bad.

"I'm not going to say nasty things about our parents, but I won't lie about them either. They had ideas about who we should be and they didn't give a shit if we didn't like those ideas. The thing about Paul, he was introverted, tended to go along with what people said, from little things like picking restaurants all the way to letting our parents decide what his career would be. I tried to convince him that it wasn't so important to be a top violinist in this orchestra or that, but Dad had told him that was what he was going to do, so he was going to do it.

"It was weird, for years, going to recitals and concerts with my parents, knowing that Paul was practically working his fingers bloody to get everything just right, and just seeing the vaguest sense of satisfaction from them as they sat there and listened. I never gave them anything so satisfying to watch, but I didn't care about them. I cared about Paul, I cared about _his_ dream.

"Paul loved the music. Paul wanted to create something of his own, to write his own piece, to not only feel someone else's music and pathos, but let other people feel his own. But he put it aside every chance he got; he needed to be front and center, for their sake, and the more he did the more I hated them for it. He started pieces, never finished them, and made excuses.

"So Paul was playing in the Bath Philharmonia when I think this all started. Second chair. There are videos online of him playing this or that solo piece if you care to see, though I don't know what they're going to do with them all now that he's dead. He looks so determined when he plays, like he's on a glorious path, cutting his way through enemies for some grand honor waiting for him on the other side. I never understood why a nod from our dad and a hug from our mum was such an incredible reward, but I don't suppose you need to understand people to love them.

"One day about a month ago, Paul told me he'd met a man, and I was happy for him, obviously. I don't worry about Paul's love life, because even though he's a pushover he usually knows better than to get involved with anyone who's obviously untrustworthy. The man was a bit older, American, but he was just as in love with the music as Paul was. I could tell Paul wasn't just smitten, he was in awe, in complete respect of this Thomas of his.

"I didn't think much of it, to be honest. Paul and I texted a lot, so he dropped hints about the dates, talked excitedly about how supportive Thomas was of his compositions and how he was finally writing again. He started talking about weird things, bad dreams, things he couldn't bear to say out loud or text, but that Thomas was starting to become one of the only things keeping him from going 'round the bend. I was worried, but this was promising, wasn't it, that he was so happy? So I told him I hoped for the best and couldn't wait to meet him whenever they were ready, and I meant it.

"About a week ago, I got a text from Paul that said to come over, and it was weird. I've looked at it since and I'm not sure what tipped me off at the time that he didn't write it, but maybe when you've talked to someone for over a decade nearly every day you get better at noticing the little things that make up someone, down to their punctuation or little word choices. Anyway, he asked me to come, so... I did, even though I already felt something awful. If something was wrong, I needed to know.

"I used my key to get in, and that's how I found him the way I did. Posed, arranged, with his neck cut open, the muscles inside thin, pale, tensed like strings, his arms bent into position to play his own throat with his bow.

"It's been a week, like I said, and they haven't told us anything. I know people do terrible things, but I don't believe an actual person could've done this. Not a human. I saw what I saw. I saw the sheet music on the table, spattered with blood, and I saw the pages marked up as though by an impatient teacher, with one single word on the top page in more vivid red than the blood: _No_.

"Statement ends."

Jon sets the paper down and, as he does too often at this point, sighs.

"While I have a particularly grim view on the extent of human ability to commit heinous violence on the best of days, I have to agree with Miss Beckett that she was right to come to us. This Thomas of his seems like the best lead. Miss Beckett was also kind enough to include the text message conversations between herself and her brother during the period that the two were dating, and we've found some small clues to the man's identity – black, always well-dressed, from New England, and an accomplished musician and would-be composer himself. Melanie is taking on the quite monumental task of discovering if such a person holds a membership in any nearby orchestras, but there are... enough of those to keep her busy for some time. Basira acquired the phone number Paul Beckett had for the man, but it's already been shut off. Quick work. I believe we're working with a practiced killer."

His hand drifts across the tape recorder, aimless. "This sort of gore is characteristic of the Flesh, but this sort of genteel approach is... novel. All signs point towards a new player. It's something to keep an eye on." He sighs wearily. "You know what I mean. End recording."

* * *

These days, Will can feel Randall Tier's flesh under his fingertips, his fingers tensed as though he's holding onto the knife he used to carve the man to pieces and inject just one of the many horrors from his mind into the real world. It was for a purpose; he knows that, Jack knows that, but that doesn't change how easy it was. It shouldn't have been easy.

As he waits for Hannibal to open the door, Will wonders if he could've killed Freddie Lounds, if he would have even needed to excuse it to himself. It's easy enough right now to separate the world out into predator and prey, and as much as so many of the people around him might think they hold power and have a firm and solid stand in the world because they understand that monsters exist, they don't understand the simplest thing.

Monsters will do what they want and take what they like from anyone who isn't a monster themselves. The only reason you know they exist is because they want you to, and they lurk everywhere.

The door opens, and Hannibal wears a small but utterly genuine smile. "Will. Come in."

Will nods, and draws inside, turning to face Hannibal as soon as the door is closed. "I wish you hadn't had Verger feed his face to my dogs," he says, conversational.

"Has that been bothering you?" Hannibal seems vaguely amused, and gestures for Will to sit across from him, going on once he's seated. "Are you concerned for your dogs' health, or is it otherwise concerning?"

"I wouldn't say I was purposely avoiding feeding them human flesh, but it wasn't exactly part of my veterinarian's suggested diet." Will leaves that darkly wry note there, and tilts his head back against the chair, dismissing it himself. "I'm tired of waiting," he interjects, as Hannibal watches him.

"Perhaps I'm waiting for you," Hannibal says smoothly, contemplating him.

Will absorbs that. "And what is it you want me to do?"

Hannibal's smile is nearly undetectable to someone who hasn't watched his face for months; Will sees it clearly. "I want you to come with me."

Will doesn't react visibly. "Where would we go?"

"I received a call yesterday from a friend in need," Hannibal explains. "I mean to go to him and help him solve a terrible problem. I don't want to go without you."

Will eyes him. "You didn't answer my question."

Hannibal glances away. "Come along," he suggests, and rises; they move through the short corridors, and Hannibal moves aside just enough to let Will see what lies ahead in the next room.

Abigail reads an old book, silently, in a plush chair. Will goes still, says nothing, even as Abigail looks up and meets his gaze. She offers an unhappy sort of smile, and breaks the silence for all their sake. "Hello, Will."

Will moves forward, with each step wondering if she'll dissipate like all the mirages of her that his brain had furnished to give him aimless, useless attempts to come to terms with what had been done to her; she doesn't. She sets the book aside, stands, and wraps her arms around Will, up on slight tiptoes to whisper into his ear, her tone strained but strident, "I don't know what else we can do."

"Trust me," Will murmurs, barely audible, and rests his face into her hair, pressing his eyes closed for a moment. He withdraws when she does and faces Hannibal. "Like I said," he says, holding Hannibal's now softer gaze, "where would we go?"

"Very far," Hannibal says, thoughtful, "where no one will find us, besides, I imagine, our quarry."

"Our quarry," Will echoes, his eyebrows raised.

"I should leave it to my friend to explain." Hannibal tilts his head up slightly. "Will. Are we understood?"

Abigail has complicated everything. His mind stammers, now, with the plain knowledge that one false move will have Abigail lose more than an ear. Maybe that was Hannibal's intent; maybe it wasn't. The question hovers in the air, heavier than Louisiana humidity, and Will breathes out slowly.

"Should I pack a bag, or is this one of those cut-and-run situations?"

Hannibal smiles, and with a gesture has Abigail move out of the room; she silently draws the hood of her sweatshirt over her head as she goes. Will looks at him, and sees too many possibilities in that expression alone to predict with any certainty what might come next.

Hannibal composes himself completely before he goes on. "You will be happier this way." Will can tell without a doubt that he means it. "Once you make your decision, you will be content."

Will scoffs lightly. "Being content isn't really my thing."

Hannibal makes the slightest shrug. "I am happy as I am. You will be happy once you discover what you truly are."

Will laughs, short. "Have I not?"

"No," Hannibal says, and smiles again. "But you will."

* * *

_I'm inviting you to dinner. Tonight. 7pm. Bring Basira._

Jon stares at the text message on his phone. The frustrating thing is that he's well aware that Elias was probably fully capable of freeing himself from prison at any point, but that doesn't make it any less jarring to realize he's out, running around, and happy to murder for his cause. The more pressing thing is whatever the aim of this dinner is, but he's not sure he's in much of a position to argue with Elias, so he goes to Basira and silently hands her the phone in hopes of getting a better response to the situation than the disconcerted feeling he's trapped with in his own head.

Basira considers it, then says, "We're going, then."

Simple as that. Jon frowns. "Into the lion's maw."

"We live in the lion's maw." Basira's smile is sardonic. "I thought you knew that."

"Hm." Jon takes his phone back, and releases a ragged sigh. "Do you think we should bring a bottle of wine?"

"Somehow I think he's well-stocked," Basira answers without missing a beat. Jon manages a faint smile. "I'll pick you up from your office," she adds. "You're terrible at watching the clock, and who knows what happens if we're late."

"Thanks," Jon says, and means it. He turns after her swift nod, and busies himself with a statement and research until the door to his office opens and Basira appears. Time passes too swiftly at the Archive, only for him, because he's its creature now. The slinking forward motion of the Archive is part of him, now.

The address they've been given leads to a high-end building of flats. They wait in the lobby for permission to be escorted into the keyed lift by well-dressed staff, and once they've been left alone in front of the door indicated in the text message, Basira raises her eyebrows at Jon before he finally gives in and knocks.

They don't have to wait long; Elias opens the door, and looks genuinely pleased to see them. "Come in," he encourages them, mildly enough, and moves into the spacious, understated flat. "Dinner is about sorted, but we're enjoying some wine now, come join us." His smile is slight. "I hope you don't mind a dry white."

Jon manages not to glance at Basira out of genuine concern over who Elias might mean to introduce tonight, but Basira speaks first. "Did you throw yourself a surprise party for your release?"

Elias laughs briefly. "No," he says. "Don't mistake the trappings of all this. We're here on business, I'm afraid. Come, sit."

Jon moves into the sitting room after Basira, and stops to look at the two men who are currently drinking wine in very different ways – one comfortably savoring, the other clearly finding the alcoholic aspect a bit more necessary. Elias takes Jon by the arm to his seat in a clearly insistent gesture, and he sits across from the younger man who looks right back at him, looking for all the world worn around every edge within him.

"Ah, introductions." Elias busies himself pouring glasses for the newcomers. "Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, and Basira Hussain, one of his assistants, meet Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, respectively a friend, and a friend of a friend."

Jon looks at Lecter for a longer moment than he intends, and catches Lecter's casual gaze – just on this side of calculating – before he averts his gaze to accept his wine. "To what do we owe the pleasure?" he asks, unable to keep from being a touch too dry.

"It truly is a pleasure," Lecter interjects. "I've heard much about you, Archivist."

Jon knows that tone and that look he's receiving from Lecter, and his vague suspicions flare into outright concern. His tone flattens. "What is this, Elias?"

"You have nothing to fear from me," Lecter attempts to make clear.

"What are you?" Jon retorts without hesitation, managing to hold back the desire to compel.

"Jon," Elias chides. "Be patient."

"We're here to help." Jon looks at Graham as he cuts in, and though his expression is relatively flat it's clear he means what he's saying. "Even though I don't know how yet." Graham's addition is openly sarcastic, now, and Jon appreciates a like-minded soul in the room, at least.

"Dr. Lecter and Will are here from America to offer some help in stopping another ritual," Elias cuts in, obviously weary of the back and forth. "I'm afraid I don't want to risk more Archival staff than I have to. I have such a wonderful group now as it is."

"Thank you." Basira's expression is nonchalant compared to the retort.

Elias looks vaguely amused, though, and says nothing to it. "Jon, I think you could give us some insight if you put some effort into it."

Jon rolls his eyes before he can stop himself. "Just tell us," he suggests. "It'll be easier for everyone."

Lecter speaks up, surprising everyone, including Elias. "We are here to hunt down a man who has involved himself with the entity known as the Flesh. His name is Tobias Budge, though we understand that he's taken false names since he's fled across the Atlantic from the law."

Jon knows, before he can stop himself. "The composer. The man who cut his throat." Basira fires him a look at the easy revelation, and he looks at her, pained. "I'm sorry, I can't help it."

Elias seems pleased enough at the use of Jon's abilities, and goes on easily. "Dr. Lecter is extremely skilled at finding people and managing them when they become difficult."

"Excuse me," Graham says, a touch acidly. "A few points of clarification."

"Yes?" Elias swirls his wine, and sips with a light smile.

Graham sets his empty glass aside and leans forward onto his knees. "What are you all talking about?" Basira laughs aloud at this, but Graham keeps going. "We're hunting a killer, I understand that, I can't imagine any other reason for Hannibal to bring me all the way here. If you want me to help, you need to explain what the hell is going on."

Lecter clears his throat lightly. "I meant to be delicate, Will, but perhaps it's time to clarify some things."

"Yes," Graham says bluntly. "It is."

"I have spoken of God before to you." Lecter visibly measures his words. "The God that permits, relishes suffering. Those gods are real. Some of those gods wish to tip this world in their favor. That's what we're here to prevent."

A silence falls over the room, then Graham laughs sharply, and Jon cuts in. "Tell me what you are, who owns you," he directs to Lecter, a near instinctive move.

"I am of the Hunt," comes out of Lecter's mouth, and his gaze hardens fractionally, eyes darker, warning. "Archivist."

Jon knows he's not successfully restraining the slightest bit of smugness at rattling this man. "You were going to talk around it for hours. I needed to know."

Basira gestures to interrupt. "They're talking about the supernatural," she tells Graham, to the point. "It's all real. And very dangerous."

"I'm used to dangerous," Graham retorts, and glances away, with a short, unhappy laugh. "I'm _not_ used to the supernatural."

"You're more accustomed than you may think." Lecter watches Graham. "You are one of us."

"I most certainly am not," Graham says flatly.

"You're on the fringe," Elias speaks up. "Somewhere between those who hunt, such as Dr. Lecter, and those who observe, such as myself and my associates."

"You will have to make a choice." Lecter meets Graham's gaze with an expression that might as well be a shrug. "I swore not to lie to you, Will, and this is the truth, as openly as I can give it."

"Excuse me," Basira says, "but don't we have a ritual to talk about?"

Jon can't help but be a touch relieved at that. "It's going to be about music," he adds.

"Budge creates instruments by trade." Graham is openly weary now. "Violins, cellos. He turned a man's throat into a cello about six months ago before fleeing here."

"The Orchestra of Blood." Elias looks terribly casual as he gains the attention of the room, and shrugs in response. "I'm afraid he means to make more than a cello."

Jon's gaze flickers over to Lecter as the man offers his glass to Elias for a refill, but he dismisses the man for now, more important things to discuss. "Do we know if he has any associates? Other adherents to the Flesh?"

"That's what we're going to find out," Elias says loftily. "I asked Dr. Lecter for his aid in finding Tobias Budge and sorting out what exactly we'll be dealing with."

"What is it you'll be doing, exactly?" Jon asks, partially at least on behalf of Graham, who appears to be drifting somewhere out in space, gaze unfocused and overwhelmed. It's a major effort to restrain the hungry grip of the knowing, of the Beholding.

"Infiltrating," Lecter clarifies, easily cutting into Jon's reverie on Graham. "Those bound to powers occasionally help each other when it's in their best interest. As I would help Elias, I can argue to Tobias that I mean to help him. A world ruled by the Flesh would be kind to the Hunt."

"The ritual cannot be stopped before it begins," Elias says, his tone daring anyone to interject. "They must complete their work and make an attempt."

Graham's gaze goes half-up, not looking at anyone, least of all Lecter. "And what is _their work_?"

"An orchestra," Jon says abruptly, unable to resist the knowing and the telling. "Made of human bodies. Played by the undead."

Graham's expression is rigid, flat, as he takes that in, then pushes himself out of the chair and disappears down the corridor. Lecter glances away. "I am afraid I could have primed him better for all of this," he says, "but I feared he wouldn't come."

"Jon." Jon's head lifts to meet Elias's gaze; Elias raises his eyebrows, and gestures demonstratively. "Speak to him."

"Me," Jon fires back, skeptical. "Wouldn't he rather hear from a friend?"

"There may be hurt feelings," Elias says delicately. "Mr. Graham is a more than sensitive person. You may be able to explain things more clearly and with less interpersonal damage than Dr. Lecter will."

"I am extraordinarily good at explaining things," Jon retorts, despite himself, and gets up off of the couch. He looks at Basira, who shrugs, and shoots a look at Elias before striding off after Graham, pressing his hands to his face to push off the irritation as he goes.

* * *

Will realizes upon reaching the end of the corridor that he has nowhere to go, and makes his way into the bathroom; he doesn't flick on the light, or close the door, and just stands in the dark, face in his hands and breaths unsteady, desperate to escape into his stream but too overwhelmed by the sensation of all of the pieces forming together into one cohesive whole in his mind, to a picture he absolutely cannot handle. 

He can sense the two gods side by side, one idly knowing, one made of gnawing hunger and covered in claws and teeth, and there are teeth in his side, his heart, sinking into his skull, and –

Someone clears their throat; Will shudders as he wakes, and opens his mouth to say something sarcastic to Hannibal. Instead, he sees the man Hannibal had archly called _Archivist_ and shuts his mouth firmly.

"I'm not going to ask you to talk," Sims says, and moves just inside the doorway, hands shoved firmly into his pockets. "I'm going to ask you to listen."

Will doesn't reply, in some form of consent, and Sims goes on. "This can't be easy. It wasn't for me. What I can tell you is that resisting the supernatural aspect that intends to adopt you is just delaying the inevitable, and any attempt to refuse knowledge of the supernatural sets you at even further risk of falling victim. And you've already fallen victim too many times, haven't you, Will?"

Will's gaze shoots up to Sims, who looks only fractionally apologetic. "You'll need to know about the Flesh," Sims says, "and I don't know how well Elias or your Dr. Lecter intend to inform you. I'll pull together a file for you, send it to you."

"Is this a joke?" Will stares at Sims. "Is this some sort of game Hannibal is playing with me?"

"This is the furthest thing from a game." Sims holds his gaze, unflinching. "This is the world at stake."

Will lets loose an irritated breath, and glances away pointedly. "You know that Elias Bouchard can't be trusted," he makes clear, voice soft. "You know what he is."

"Yes." Sims seems bothered but wearily acceptant of the premise. "We're well-aware. So is law enforcement. There's very little we can do about that."

"That's not what I'm saying," Will says, an edge to his tone, his instincts too flared to resist revealing what he'd clearly seen leaving his mouth. "That man has a purpose in everything he does, and none of it is for the betterment of mankind."

Sims is staring at him, but Will doesn't look his way, even when Sims speaks up again. "Is that something you observed, or something you know?"

Will doesn't like the tone of that question. "What do you mean?"

Sims makes a soft, restless sound, expression vaguely disconcerted. "They're not wrong. You're going to have to choose."

"I don't understand," Will says, rapid, annoyed. "I'm not some kind of supernatural medium. I'm a profiler, I look at the evidence, I lay it out in my head."

Sims doesn't seem interested in this debate. "Whatever you do," he says, "be aware that Elias will know."

Will pulls in a slow breath, eager to fight off the discomfort and exasperation of the cryptic nature of all of these conversations. "What do you mean?" he repeats.

"I mean what I said. Elias knows things." Sims barely pauses. "As do I. But you can count me as your ally as long as you mean to interrupt this ritual."

"He knows things about me," Will deduces. "He knows what I'm going to do."

"He knows everything about you," Sims returns, "except for what you'll actually do when the moment comes. He can't tell the future, just the present and the past."

"So he's psychic?" Will can't help but be sarcastic.

Sims looks a moment away from an eyeroll. "It's our job to know things, Mr. Graham. I thought you'd be able to relate."

"You really think I'm one of you." Will steadies his tone. "Some sort of supernatural creature."

Sims visibly measures his response. "I think that you're touched by power," he says, "whether you like it or not. The desire to hunt prey, and the ability to know things beyond regular human understanding."

"This is ridiculous," Will fires back, exasperated. "I'm a profiler. It's my job to find criminals."

"But you're different from the rest of them." Sims is matter-of-fact. "They put a puzzle together from pieces. You don't have to even touch the pieces. You see the complete picture." Will falls silent, perturbed, and Sims goes on. "I'm not here to tip you in either direction. What I'm here to do is ask you to help us in this goal, no matter how uncomfortable it is to know the truth."

Will makes the slightest gesture of his head, half a nod, then Sims glances away and disappears down the corridor again. He's left with his thoughts for a moment as they race, as the panic sets in, because there is no way he can possibly begin to explain this to Jack, who's likely beside himself at the flight across the Atlantic anyway. He swipes his hands over his face, then returns to the sitting room, where the far-more-informed other four are having a conversation he's dreading hearing.

"The average chamber orchestra is at least fifty members strong," Elias is saying casually, as Will sits next to Hannibal without looking at him.

"You're saying we need to let fifty people die," Sims says sharply.

"At the very least." Elias glances at Basira. "What do you think?"

"I think we need to prevent this ritual," Basira says without hesitation. "And we can't if it doesn't go underway."

"We have to stand by while at least fifty people die," Sims interjects again, in apparent disbelief. "Elias, this is – beyond the pale, even for you."

"We have no choice." Hannibal is subtler than matter-of-fact, but just barely. "If the ritual doesn't go underway, as Miss Hussain says, Budge can merely mount it again at another point in time."

"And if we kill Budge," Sims persists.

"Then another will rise in his place," Hannibal answers instantly. "I thought you would understand this, Archivist."

"Basira," Sims tries, but she just eyes him, and he can't resist an irritated sigh.

Will clears his throat. "If I'm getting this right," he says, "the only way to prevent this apocalyptic event is to allow a large number of people to die gruesomely. Is that what we're dealing with?"

"Yes," Elias says mildly.

Will barely glances at Hannibal, and by now he knows the pained softness in Hannibal's face when he desperately wants Will to realize he's telling the truth. This is all real. It must be. Will looks to the rest of them, and leans back heavily. "You're asking me to pretend I want to kill over fifty people."

"For the good of many," Hannibal says, nearly gentle.

For the good of Abigail. That had been his whole purpose in following Hannibal all the way to London. Will's mouth sets. "What do you need me to do?"

"Be a hunter." Will's eyes meet Elias Bouchard's after he speaks, and he doesn't trust the smile that crosses the man's face at that. He knows in that moment that Sims was telling the truth, that Bouchard knows about Randall Tier, that he knows about the awful thrill Will felt while crouched over Tier's body, knowing what he'd done. Hannibal couldn't have brought that across to him. This is a man who knows him.

But he doesn't know what Will will actually do, not until the moment comes.

"I can do that," Will answers, and his pulse leaps as Hannibal's hand brushes his own in the slightest bit of comfort.

"More wine?" Elias suggests.

Will glances at Sims, who looks as tired as he's ever seen himself in the mirror. Sympathy flares in him. That kind of beaten-down morality isn't something someone can fake.

He can ally himself with Sims with just enough confidence; a man with immense power and none all at once, desperately keeping some small flame of humanity left burning in himself, will do the right thing whenever he can. He can trust very few people here in London, he thinks, but he can, at least, trust the good intentions of the Archivist.

* * *

"I understand this is... less than optimal," Jon starts, and feels himself age a month or so just looking at the expression that crosses Melanie's face before he can go on. "If there were any other way – "

"So," Melanie says acidly, a distance from his desk, arms crossed, gaze sharp. "Point one: you're taking Elias's word on this?"

"I'm doing what past Archivists have done with regards to this behavior in avatars," Jon answers, as diplomatically as he can manage, fingers busy with a paperweight to keep his anxiety down.

"Would Gertrude Robinson have let over fifty people die?" Melanie shoots back.

"Yes, I think so." Jon holds Melanie's gaze. "Point two?"

Melanie doesn't look ready to back down yet. "Why are we so sure that someone else from the Flesh will try a ritual at a future point if we prevent this now?"

"They always get someone new, and none of them are sane," Basira chimes in, from her spot in the chair across from Jon's desk. "The risk of being murdered won't put off anyone ambitious enough to cause their own personal apocalypse. We could have this happen all over again within a year. We don't know. But if we thwart their ritual in progress, they can't do it again, at least not any time soon."

"She's right." Jon hates himself for admitting it. "I don't like it either. But there's one path forward."

Melanie doesn't miss a beat after he's finished speaking. "Then you handle it. I don't want to hear anything about it. I don't want to be involved."

"Melanie," Jon tries, but she's already left the office and shut the door behind herself. He looks at Basira, who's watching him with vague bemusement. "Have you got anything for me, while we're here?" he asks.

"Lecter sent confirmation that he and Graham will be making their move to join Budge and Jared Hopworth by the end of the day. They seem to have fallen for the bait." Basira casually slips her shoe on and off her foot with an idle motion, legs crossed. "What do you think?"

"I think I'd feel more comfortable if Elias would tell me what he knows." Jon can't help being sarcastic in voicing the idea, though. "It might be simpler that way than to rake through statements for information and rely upon strangers to send along information while they pose as undercover psychopaths."

"You don't trust Lecter or Graham," Basira supposes.

"Graham has to be our point-man on this," Jon says, firm on this. "He'll tell us the truth."

Basira is observing him now. "Why don't you trust Lecter?"

Jon chooses his words carefully; while Basira is astoundingly practical, dropping her details he's gleaned about Hannibal Lecter's predilections might be off-putting to even her. "He's an avatar. I don't trust avatars."

Basira's smile is faint, ironic. "You're an avatar."

"Sometimes I can't be trusted either," Jon returns, a grim deadpan. "You know that."

Basira slips her shoe back onto her foot properly and moves to stand. "How do we keep in touch with Graham?"

He has to admit the answer is nearly absurd. "Apparently, email. Or, at least, he'll contact us via email. I'm not so sure he wants us to send anything in return."

Basira makes a brief amused sound. "He may change his mind about that. You've seen how the Archival staff gets and there are only two avatars at a time. He might need the emotional support, being around three." Jon grimaces despite his agreement; at least Elias has been keeping his distance from the Institute, so they haven't had to put up with him as well as Peter Lukas, though why Elias just hasn't seized control of the Institute again is beyond Jon's generally broad understanding. "Anyway," she says, "keep me up to date."

"I promise," Jon says, and means it. "You know where to find me, I know where to find you."

"You know things?" Despite the wryness in her tone, Basira's smile is just a touch more there, and it earns a bit of the same from Jon. "I'll see you."

"Yeah," Jon agrees; he sets the paperweight down as she leaves his office, and feels something just along the edge of his comprehension. He lets it unravel slowly, leaning back in his chair on instinct, a welcome relief from the usual exhaustion; everything shifts within him and he realizes he's fallen asleep, his mind having dropped him into the setting of a dimly-lit office with high ceilings and bookshelves. It's nowhere he's ever seen, maybe an echo of Elias's flat in some respects, but one thing he can recognize is standing near the red-and-grey curtains and peering through the windows.

"Mr. Graham." That doesn't get a reaction. Jon knows, the way he knows anything, that this is the real Will Graham, an innocent victim of dream invasion, standing that distance away, not some guilt-ridden dream his mind has inflicted on him. "Will," he goes on, instead.

"What do you want?" Will barely turns.

Jon knows what the answer has to be. "I'm here to support you."

Will makes a dismissive sound. "You don't know me."

Wishful thinking, that. "Even if I didn't," Jon says, "you're the only person I can trust going in there."

Will seems ready to accept that answer, and turns to face him completely. "Is this real?" He gestures around. "I mean... I know I'm not in Hannibal's office, I'm in London, but are you – "

"Yes." Jon catches his gaze, a difficult thing to do. "This is a real conversation, with the real me."

"Even though I'm asleep." Will doesn't seem to like that answer. "You can get inside my head."

"You seemed to want some proof of the supernatural, you've got it," Jon says, sardonic, then shakes his head, brushing off the desire to be dismissive. "I'm not doing it for fun or profit. I... I think I wanted you to know that I would be available to you."

"So you'll just drop in whenever you want," Will assumes, though he's less defensive than he was a moment ago.

"I'll drop in when I get the inclination you need me." Jon lets out a slow breath. "And you will need me."

"I looked over your file on these Flesh people." Will glances away, wary. "If this is a long con, it's a very elaborate one."

Jon shrugs. "I didn't write horror fiction for you, if that's what you're suggesting." He shifts, uncomfortable in this exchange, with no reassurance at all from Will Graham's lack of response. "What will it take for you to trust me?"

"I don't know," Will confesses, scratching his head. "The supernatural stuff is... it's a lot to get used to. Hannibal tried, but he isn't particularly skilled in explaining abstract concepts in a concrete way, so it hasn't exactly felt real yet." But Jon knows there's more than just that concern rolling around in his head, and Will seems to know that he knows, and there's an uncomfortable moment; Will's sigh comes out weary. "Fuck, there's no point saying anything out loud with you, is there?"

"Maybe not in this setting." Jon hesitates. "You worry he's keeping details from you out of fear of pushing you away."

Will slightly inclines his head in a nod. "He's balancing what to tell me and what not to tell me, in order to best keep me next to him."

"If that's a real concern… if this isn't something you can do," Jon starts, tone low, "now would be a good time to get yourself back across the pond."

Will's response is swift. "I have my reasons. I've faced psychopaths before." He rolls his eyes. "How many were secretly supernatural creatures, I don't know."

"If it's at all a comfort, not every psychopath out there is an avatar," Jon offers, lightly droll, "but every avatar is a psychopath. In their own way."

"You're an avatar." Will's expression is vaguely amused. "Are you a psychopath?"

"Sometimes," Jon supposes. "But I do my best."

Honesty seems to have worked; Will looks more at ease, now. "I'm used to trusting terrible people," he says. "Can I trust you?"

"Yes." Jon doesn't hesitate. "With your life."

"Don't make me promises you can't keep," Will warns, near instantly, and his expression softens just enough at whatever look crosses Jon's face. "I don't like when people break promises to me."

"Fine." Jon exhales sharply. "I'll do everything I can. I'll be available to you. You won't be alone."

Will is silent for a moment, then says, "Fine."

It's enough for Jon. He gives the slightest nod to Will, then, slowly, opens his eyes to return to the waking world and his office.

He doesn't regret the promise at all.

* * *

It's all real.

Will rests silently against the back of the dining room chair, exhausted, generally disregarding Hannibal's presence beside him. The bigger problem is not catching the attention of the two men, or what once passed as men, across the table from him. The thing they're calling Jared Hopworth is, as advertised in the statements given to him by Sims, an absolute monstrosity of extra limbs, bones, and flesh, and Will is intent on not looking at him or catching his eye at all if he can help it. Budge is a completely different issue; Budge may have transcended human needs some time ago, but Will can still see the picture in vivid color, one that shows that Budge's concerns are still wholly based around petty human ego and ambitions.

It's a mundane serial killer profile: _watch how they run; they'll never be able to deny how clever I am, and they will never catch me._ It doesn't belong here. Something like Budge shouldn't be alongside all of the movie-screen horror of Hopworth, because the plain disparity between the two makes it more and more difficult to deny reality.

All of that aside, there is plainly human meat on the table, but Will is still managing to eat, so he's counting this dinner as a win so far.

"Dr. Lecter," Budge is saying as Will tunes back into the conversation mentally, "I have a point of order."

Hannibal finishes his bite, and gives a slight nod. "Go on."

"We're giving you a chance to prove that you're trustworthy, but there's the issue of your pet FBI agent," Budge says; Will forces himself to not look up. "We don't like him. We don't trust him."

"Why do we need him?" Hopworth adds. "Three of us can manage this no problem."

"I'm not so sure we even need you," Budge clarifies, and Will notices Hannibal's posture change, just fractionally.

"You do. You need both of us. " Hannibal is matter-of-fact. "You were sloppy, Tobias. The Eye knows what you intend."

It changes the mood at the table within an instant. "What's the Eye got to do with any of this?" Hopworth asks, tone flat. "You saying we've got that Archive to worry about?"

Hannibal glances at Will, who glances up at him, inquiring but pointed. "Will has come into his own as an adherent to the Beholding," he says, and looks to the two things passing as men or men-like across the table. "He will be able to see what they see, and what they know."

Budge's tone is curt. "What you're saying is that we should allow both the Hunt and the Eye into our process."

"If you want to complete this with the amount of human resources you will need and manage it without the Magnus Institute's interference," Hannibal says mildly, "yes, that is exactly what I am saying."

 _Human resources._ That's gruesome. Will forces himself to look across the table, in time to see Hopworth rippling and hear his bones crackling. He manages to keep his expression clear from disgust. "What would it take to convince you?" he asks.

"Let's say we win." Budge leans forward. "You would live in a world ruled by our god. That's acceptable to you?"

Will knows what to say. "As long as you give me something to look at."

Hopworth snorts. "Right, that's the long and short of it for your sort, en't it."

"Will, if you would help me clear the table," Hannibal suggests; the other two men leave, continuing a rumbling and low conversation with each other, and Will is able to breathe with far less difficulty, busying himself by gathering plates. Hannibal offers two plates to add to his stack and some silverware, and catches Will's gaze. "You're doing very well," he makes clear, voice soft.

"Hm," Will returns, unable to resist some skepticism, and turns to go into the kitchen of their London flat. Once he and Hannibal are safely on the opposite side of the flat from the Flesh avatars, he feels more comfortable speaking. "They have a list of people. Are we using it?"

"To begin with," Hannibal supposes, and offers Will a towel before beginning to wash the dishes. "After that, we may use our imaginations."

Will makes a sound of weary amusement. "I would rather not."

"Is it not some small comfort that you were correct all along?" Hannibal calmly douses the sponge in soap, another strange mundane moment that catches Will in the midst of all this. _Dinner_ , dishes, like they're normal people. He clues back into Hannibal as he speaks again. "It has never been a matter of imagination, but of skill."

"I didn't ask for skill or imagination," Will returns, a touch sarcastic, and dries off one of the plates upon receiving it. "I just wanted to be a cop."

"Sometimes we are touched by greatness." Hannibal glances idly in the direction of where Budge and Hopworth must be relaxing in their sitting room. "Sometimes we are not."

Will makes a half-hearted sound of amusement. "I don't feel particularly great."

"But you are." Hannibal says it without any particular emphasis, as though this is a simple fact Will should have accepted long ago, and it stops Will for a moment, and forces his gaze down and unsteady. They wash and dry dishes for a few moments, then Hannibal goes on. "You are safe as long as you are with me, Will. You both are."

Perfectly phrased. _With me_ , meaning alongside, meaning loyal to. Will is grateful that Hannibal's abilities don't extend into seeing directly into his head the way Sims's do, or he would have far more problems than he currently has. "Abigail is going to have questions."

Hannibal hands him the last of the silverware to dry. "Abigail is adaptable. She will manage with what we give her." 

Will finally looks into Hannibal's face again, and finds him amiable. "Don't be in a good mood," he requests of Hannibal then. "This is a bad time to be in a good mood."

"I have looked forward to this for some time," Hannibal says, a confession with feigned ease, concern hidden behind his expression. "The two of us, working together."

Will raises his eyebrows. "I assumed the circumstances would be different."

"The only difference is the supernatural, Will. The rest is exactly as you must have believed was inevitable."

At some level, yes, that's true. "Can, um, can you deal with Hopworth and Budge? I want to talk to Abigail."

Hannibal nods, and touches his elbow lightly. "I will find you once I've completed enough pleasantries to get them out the door."

"That'd be appreciated," Will says, with more feeling than he meant, and doesn't meet Hannibal's gaze as he moves away at a reasonable pace to get to the small room set aside for Abigail. He knocks, and rests against the doorway until he hears her soft "Come in."

Abigail rests against the headboard of the bed, finger flicking at the top of the page of her book as she meets Will's gaze. He shuts the door and turns back to her, and lets out a slight sigh before she cuts in to speak first: "I don't know who's going to tell me what's going on first, you or Hannibal."

Is he really ready to get into all of this with her? "It's a long story."

"Everything in our lives is a long story, isn't it?" Abigail watches him. "Will."

"How much do you know about what Hannibal is?" Will blurts out.

Abigail keeps flicking the top of the page over and over again, gaze intent on the half-yellowed paper. "Do you mean the part where he's a serial killer, or the part where he can make you help him?"

Will stares where the bedding meets the carpet, not wanting to unnerve her by fixating while he tries to put it together. "He convinced you into killing."

"I'm not sure I ever had a choice." _Flick, flick_ , back and forth, the slightest sound in the quiet of the room. "My dad poisoned me with... whatever they are, just serial killers, more than that. But I know I'm not crazy. I know what Hannibal did between the time he cut my ear off and the time you finally saw me again. He... used something, turned some dial in my brain." She exhales. "I couldn't stop myself once I'd started. I'd recover afterward, but then it would start all over again."

Will is terribly numb all at once. "It's not your fault." She scoffs, but he shakes his head. "It's beyond any of our power. What we are, what Hannibal has helped turn us into."

"That's just an excuse, Will." Abigail shuts her book with a sharp sound. "We did what we did."

"It's not suicide if you're pushed," Will says, and his breath comes out shaky. "If you want me to get you out of here – to get you home – "

Abigail laughs, an unhappy sound. "Yeah, that'll happen."

"You deserve to have an attempt at a normal life." Will has to swallow hard to force down the tension in his throat, even for a moment's peace. "Don't you?"

"I don't," Abigail says openly. "Do you?"

Will knows he doesn't, and suspects she knows he doesn't, so he can't even begin to muster a normal response to that. "I just want you to be safe," he says, just audible enough.

"I've never been safe." Abigail's tone is awful in its bittersweet acceptance, its pointed flatness. "Why start now?"

He can do this. "I will protect you. In any way you need me to."

"Don't make me promises, Will." She glances away from him, and it's a relief. "Just do your best. Hannibal will do his."

What a loaded reponse. Will pulls himself together, and clears his throat. "What are you reading?" he asks, as though to clear the air.

Abigail doesn't seem to be buying it. "Catch-22."

Will laughs aloud, unable to resist it. "Yeah. How is it?"

"It's funny," Abigail figures.

"Isn't it," he says, and scratches his head. "Uh, yeah. I'll leave you to it."

"So are you like him now?" Will's gaze shoots up at the question, one he maybe should've been more prepared for. Abigail is staring right into his face. "That's what you two are busy planning?"

"It's complicated," Will hedges.

"I get it." Abigail shakes her head, and opens her book back up to the page. "You can come here whenever," she adds, not looking up.

That's something, isn't it? "Yeah," Will repeats, and withdraws to go into the master bedroom; he sits heavily on the bed, knees to his chest, face to his knees, just registering the tips of his socked toes until Hannibal walks into the room. He doesn't look up, even when Hannibal sits near him, and a long silence stretches between them.

"I have the list." Hannibal's voice is quiet, easy. "We'll begin tomorrow."

"Right," Will says softly.

"You have nothing to fear but your own confused moral compass right now, Will." Will doesn't react to that, so Hannibal reaches out to touch him, his hand gentle against Will's shoulder, then a light touch to his knee. "You have always believed you knew which way true north lay, but the world is more complex than you have ever been prepared to believe."

"Maybe I'm not ready to hand innocent people off to creatures like that for some sort of – grotesque cultural exhibition," Will says, barely lifting his head from his knees.

"And if they are not innocent people?" Hannibal inquires.

Will looks up a bit more at that. "What?"

"They are not all innocent people. There are awful creatures that do not deserve the privilege of humanity on this list, Will. We can also include our own human monsters on this list if we so choose." Hannibal considers him. "Is that any help to you?"

It might be a lie. But it's a lie that would help Will, if he allows himself to believe it. "Sims says I have to choose between being like you and being like him," he voices. "Is that true?"

"I think it is, yes." Hannibal's expression is unreadable. "Know that I will not force your hand."

That would be new. "I don't know what I am," Will confesses before he can stop himself.

"We'll figure it out together," Hannibal promises, and smoothes his thumb over Will's knee again. Will closes his eyes, and says nothing as Hannibal sits directly next to him. The companionable silence is more reassuring than it should be.

* * *

Despite Jon's expectation that he was meant to keep track of all of this, Elias calls a meeting to update the Archival staff on the progress of the Flesh's ritual, the three victims already procured, and the suspected intent to desecrate for each. It seems almost pointed, a thought which only occurs to Jon when Basira comes to tell him that Melanie has successfully gouged out her own eyes and is resting comfortably at Georgie's flat.

"Don't visit her," Basira finishes with, before Jon can open his mouth and suggest just doing just that. He frowns at her, and she shrugs. "She doesn't want to deal with any of us anymore. I might visit. But you're the Archive. Why would she want to see you?"

Jon's mouth sets for a moment, then he shakes his head. "I don't want to have to acquire more staff," he says. "I don't want to bring anyone else into all this if I don't have to."

"We're the only ones on this specific mission," Basira points out.

"As of this morning, the Archive consists of you and me." Jon holds Basira's gaze. "Unless I get Martin back, we're sorely understaffed."

Basira rolls her eyes. "Don't tell me you're going to go argue with Peter Lukas about Martin."

Jon sends her a warning look. "We need him. He could be instrumental."

"I understand, but it's clear something is going on there, and it's Peter Lukas," Basira says patiently. "We should leave well enough alone, no matter if you're worrying about him."

"I'm not – it's not – " Jon exhales sharply. "I'm going. Can you talk to Elias?"

Basira looks skeptical. "He's not going to tell me anything new."

"It's worth a try." Jon persists at looking at her, and finally she throws up a hand and turns to his office door. "Thank you," he calls after her.

"Yeah," she returns without looking back, and leaves the door open for him as she goes.

There's a long moment where Jon actually does weigh Basira's words in his head, but honestly he doesn't care much if Peter Lukas laughs at him or whatever Lukases do when people question them. Jon should be able to hold his own against Peter Lukas right now even if things escalate.

He needs Martin back.

Jon knocks on the door of Peter's office, half-expecting Elias to emerge and the pretense of a Lukas regime easily shattered before him, but after about a solid minute the door opens and Peter Lukas stands there with a smile. "Jon! Do come in."

Jon offers a small nod and draws inside, not ready to sit, and watches Peter as he moves around the desk to take a seat. "How can I help you today?" Peter asks, amiable enough.

He's not going to get caught up in pleasantries or witticisms. This is too important. "I'm sure you heard about Melanie."

"Yes, what a shame," Peter says, half a lament. "Imagine being driven to such a thing."

The guilt digs at him, but Jon says nothing to that. "I need Martin back as an archival assistant."

Peter laughs, astonished. "Jon," he starts, plainly amused.

"No." Jon's not having this. "Whatever he's doing can't be more important than what Elias _left prison_ to direct us to do. And even before any rituals, I need three archival assistants to keep the place running. Right now I have _one_." He stares at Peter, whose visibly amused expression has gone vaguely cold. "You're leaving me with just Basira."

"And what of Mr. Graham?" Peter persists in being half-cheerful. "Don't you think he has promise?"

This is new. "Are you saying I'm supposed to recruit Will Graham?" Jon can't help but be astounded. "I sincerely doubt – I'm telling you, I need Martin back."

"You can't have him," Peter says, matter-of-fact. "If you want another assistant, you've got one on the hook right now."

Jon fights back irritation. "What could possibly be so important in your ledger that you need Martin more than I do?" 

"You are fully capable of doing what Elias has asked with what you currently have," Peter points out. "Manage your resources."

"I want to talk to Martin," Jon decides abruptly. "Where is he?"

"Oh, don't be dramatic." Peter looks pained. "Everything is as it should be, Jon. Don't fuss."

"I'm not fussing, I think if Martin knew what was at stake he would agree with me." Jon's on a tear now. "Where is he, Peter?"

"Busy," Peter says promptly. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Peter."

Martin's voice is pained in a wholly different way as he speaks up behind Jon, and Jon turns swiftly to face him. Martin's expression is drawn, face pale, and he can't seem to comfortably meet Jon's gaze. "I'll be right back," he says to Peter, and opens the door of the office to move into the corridor. Jon doesn't waste any time following him, briefly catching him by the arm before moving a step further away in concern that the gesture might be too familiar – and it does visibly catch Martin by surprise. "Jon – "

"You know what's going on," Jon says, urgent. "You know what happened with Melanie."

"I heard." Martin's eyes briefly flick to Jon's. "Peter's right. There's a lot going on right now."

"Like _what_ ," Jon says, waspish. "What is more important than another ritual?"

"It's complicated," Martin hedges. "You're just going to have to trust me."

"I don't understand." Jon stares him down. "I don't know why you're wasting your time as an assistant to a Lukas right now, when the world is at stake."

It's one button pressed too many. "Did it ever occur to you that you don't know _everything_?" Martin retorts.

Jon laughs, a shade bitterly. "Oh, don't start with that, you know very well that – "

"You don't," Martin says, defensive. "Anyway, the point is – the point is you have your issues, I have mine, let's leave it at that."

"Martin!" Jon snaps off, and it's maybe more emotional than he wants it to be, and isn't that embarrassing. He glances away pointedly. "Please," he finishes.

"I'm sorry." He can feel Martin watching him. "When the time comes… maybe I can be some help to you. Maybe. Until then, I'm, I'm busy."

"If you don't tell me..." Jon's tone cools as he manages to look back at Martin. "I can find out on my own."

Martin's smile is thin, unhappy. "You have enough on your plate right now without getting involved in my business."

It's unfortunately true. "I see," Jon says archly. "Well, go on. Mr. Lukas needs you."

"Jon." Martin's tone dips into nearly a plea, and Jon turns abruptly away, walks away, so he doesn't have to see what's written plainly across Martin's face as he goes on. "I'm, I'm not – _Jon_ – _fine_!"

There's always something twiddly to do in the Archive, something to keep yourself busy to put off the horror, but right now it's distraction enough from the irritation and worry, which is distraction itself from the immense guilt of _Melanie_. All of the power of the Archivist and he can't keep one woman sane enough to remain in one physical piece and hard at work for the good of the entire planet.

Maybe Melanie's choice is the sane one. He doesn't know. All he knows is that at least an hour passes, then the cursory knock at the door comes, before it opens to reveal Basira.

"Are you sulking?" Basira asks; Jon's head is still dipped over his laptop, mouth in a firm line. "I'll take that as a yes."

"No news from Elias?" Jon asks, managing not to be too snappish.

"Lots of words, no news," Basira confirms, and leans on the back of the chair. "We don't need Martin."

Jon can't help but be sardonic. "That's what Peter Lukas says."

"Jon." Basira barely pauses. "Look at me." He lifts his gaze to her, and she holds it. "Whatever's going on with you and Martin, it's not more important than what we're doing. Yeah?"

"I never said it was." Jon's defensive again. "I'm not even sure what you're getting at."

Basira doesn't look convinced. "This is personal. That's why you're sulking."

Jon rolls his eyes. "I'm not sulking."

"Whatever it is," she reiterates, "let it go for now. We'll get Martin back eventually."

Some part of Jon isn't so sure about that. "Whatever you say," he decides upon.

"Great." Basira sets down a file on his desk. "Oh, no news from Graham. Are you going to check in on him?"

It's a relief to change the subject, honestly. "I'd planned on it."

"Let me know how it goes." She offers the faintest hint of a smile, and leaves the office. Jon looks through the file she's left – normal Archive things, nothing to do with the ritual – and releases a shaky, awkward breath.

He can't go to Melanie. He can't bring Martin back. All the powers the Eye can offer can't make him any less powerless in this moment.

Jon shuffles paper. What else can he do?

* * *

There's a hissing in Will's ears as he catches up to the victim up the hill and seizes him around the neck, cuts off airflow, keeps him from screaming. Hannibal is right behind Will, now, and touches Will's shoulder in a plain effort to steady him; Will releases his hold enough for Hannibal to inject the man with the paralytic, then he slumps into Will's arms.

Will can't breathe. This is their twentieth victim and the fifth week he's spent with Hannibal, Budge, and Hopworth, and cognitive dissonance has rattled his brain so hard that he doesn't even know who or what he is in flashes of confusion. Right now he knows he likes it, and he knows he hates it, and he knows he wants it.

"This way," Hannibal says softly to Will, and guides him to drag the body to the car.

The drive through the countryside is quiet between the two of them, but Will's agitation rises with every second, until Hannibal feels the urge to speak up from his spot at the driver's seat. "Tell me what is happening, Will."

"I don't know," Will bites out, and shifts uncomfortably against the seatbelt, the urge to break free and run anywhere but here peaking in him. "I feel – I feel _everything_. At once. Somehow."

"You feel powerful," Hannibal offers. "That is, I would say, unusual for you."

Hannibal doesn't always get it right, but this time he has a point. "I don't want this. I don't want to be like this."

Will realizes that might have been a mistake to add, but Hannibal doesn't seem particularly bothered by this line of thought, not yet. "I thought you enjoyed the act of killing."

"This is different. You know what they're going to do."

There is a church in the countryside, abandoned, stained-glass windows cracked to allow pure sunlight to fall upon the nineteen human instruments currently gathered on what was once its altar. Budge has completed most of the string instruments and a bony woodwind or two, with clear pride in his craftsmanship, while Hopworth works on his own finding creatures willing to play and learn.

It is the most grotesque thing Will has ever seen, and he has seen many things.

Will snaps his mind back to the car as Hannibal speaks. "You are afraid of what you might become in the service of this goal."

There's no denying it. "Yes."

"You underestimate yourself," Hannibal suggests. "You're like me."

Will laughs, short. "I thought I was, before all this – " He gestures. "Extra, extra supernatural shit."

Hannibal contemplates that. "Now that you know about the supernatural… what do you think you are?"

Will frowns, and rubs a hand over his face. "I'm tired," he confesses. "I'm tired of all of this."

"We are not nearly finished, Will," Hannibal clarifies. "But you are stronger than you think." Before Will can respond, he goes on. "Who do you serve?"

"I don't know," Will admits, unable to stop himself.

Hannibal is quiet for a moment. "You feel the Hunt. I can feel your heartbeat, the blood rushing in your ears. I can sense it in your breath."

It's a bizarrely intimate thing, one that halts Will's breath for a moment. "You can sense something in me," he says slowly.

"You commune alongside me every time we go to cross another name off of our list," Hannibal says, nearly gently. "I feel the Hunt in your blood, in the way I feel it myself."

This is not something he needs to hear right now, but a lot of conversations with Hannibal go that way. "And the Eye? What do I do with that?"

"You make a conscious choice to surrender what you see in favor of what you must chase," Hannibal says simply.

Will presses his hands to his face and says nothing. Thankfully, Hannibal leaves it at that, and they arrive at the church within twenty minutes. The two of them move the man's body into the front hall of the building, and Hannibal makes quick work of tying the arms and legs with rope set aside for the purpose for when the paralytic wears off. Will hopes to go numb before the two adherents to the Flesh arrive to greet them, but he's still feeling raw and unpleasant when Hopworth appears. He's even bonier than before, and Will averts his gaze pointedly.

"Just in time," Hopworth notes, apparently pleased. "You want to hear what Budge's pet has so far?"

Hannibal smiles. "Our composer has made some headway on the piece?"

"Yeah, a bit, at least," Hopworth says. "Don't care for classical music myself, but Budge says we can hear one part without ruining the whole damn thing."

Will hates Hopworth so vividly it almost aches – the sight of him, the sound of his voice, his flippant disregard for humanity, the way he makes the thought recur that Will might be evolving into something just as terrible without the visible monstrosity to warn any future victims beforehand. He says nothing, but Hannibal guides him by the arm to follow Hopworth into the church proper, where Budge sits next to the composer, a light-haired, middle aged man whose name Will may never know. The monsters certainly didn't care to note it.

The human instruments rest silently on the altar behind Budge and the composer, not rotting, only the scent of blood heavy in the air. Will forces himself to look at the instruments for at least a moment, in some desperate attempt to give the victims some little respect. _I see you. You aren't objects to me. You matter. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I was a part of this._

"I think you have something here," Budge is saying to the man as they peer over a sheaf of paper, nearly encouraging, and Will wishes he could punch the satisfied calm out of Budge's face. Maybe the Hunt is still pulsing through his system, he realizes, and barely glances at Hannibal; if Hannibal is aware that Will is still feeling this way, he's decided to put the topic off for now.

Budge looks up at them, and offers a half-smile. "We have a wonderful violin part," he notes. "Would you like to hear it?"

The composer looks between Will and Hannibal, gaze pleading, but says nothing. As far as Will knows, he hasn't said anything since his arrival at the church. It's possible he may never say anything again, for the rest of what will be his inevitably short life.

"We would love to," Hannibal answers, with the lightest touch smile in return. "Please. Go on."

Budge rises with the papers in hand, sets them on a music stand in front of what was once a woman who has now been crafted into a fine violin, her long dark hair draping down along Budge's body as he positions himself. "Here we are," he murmurs, and begins to play.

Will won't claim to know much about classical music, but it's a strange piece, melancholy but somehow wrong. A dizzy feeling pours through from his head to his chest and he has to force himself to stay firmly on his feet; Hannibal's hand is on the small of his back when the music stops and the feeling fades.

"A fine start," Hannibal assures the composer, who averts his gaze. "You've taught him well, Tobias."

"As you've taught yours." Budge's gaze lingers on Will now. "What has our pet observer found?"

"The Archivist has found nothing of use." Will keeps his tone flat, steady. "Consider we're about halfway to completion, I'd say that's not bad."

"Taking our sweet time to get there, though," Hopworth speaks up from behind them.

"And how long would it take for you to do this on your own, Mr. Hopworth?" Hannibal inquires, turning to face him; Will doesn't move.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Hopworth says, "but there's got to be a faster way."

"No." Budge's eyes are still on Will, the look in them a pure challenge. "There isn't. And we can't lose our chance. We _won't_ lose our chance."

"Nothing less." Hannibal catches Will by the elbow. "We will have more for you soon. For now, we must eat. Will is starving."

"Got some cuts for you," Hopworth says, casual. "Fridge in back."

Hannibal responds with a simple nod in gratitude, and leads Will through the back to where an old refrigerator is parked and audibly running; inside, there are cuts of flesh wrapped in butcher's paper inside of plastic bags, and Hannibal takes them up before guiding Will through the back exit. "They don't butcher with elegance," he says, "but it does suffice for a meal."

Will musters the will to speak. "Hannibal."

Hannibal hushes him. "Take your time. I know you need it."

They drive in silence as they return to the plush flat now passing as 'home.' Will excuses himself and goes to bury his face in a pillow, relishing the solitude, and slips into dreams.

He finds himself in the cage in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, with Sims on the other side of the bars. "Dare I ask?" Sims asks, a clear droll joke.

"Don't you already know?" Will doesn't like where this is heading.

"I can let you out." Sims wears the shade of a dark smile. "You can show me around."

"Right," Will says, on edge. He watches Sims casually shatter the lock into pieces in some form of dream logic to release Will from the cage, who steps out, and goes on without hesitation: "You took your time getting back to me."

"You haven't been easy to contact." Sims gestures with his head for Will to move along, and Will leads the way to walk the halls of what his mind recalls from the weeks of imprisonment. "Are you purposely shutting me out?"

Will doesn't know what to say to that. "No."

"I see." Sims moves beside him as they move through the corridors. "At last count you said you were at fifteen victims."

"Twenty today." Will is as detached about it as he can be. "And the piece is nearly composed."

Sims frowns. "And you," he says. "How are you faring?"

"Does that matter?" Will retorts.

"Yes." Sims hesitates. "Your stability is important. To me, to our goal."

What is there to say? "The Hunt is trying to take me."

"That seemed likely, considering." Sims sounds tired. He always sounds tired. "And if it can't have you, it will feed on you."

"I can't do this." The words escape his mouth before he can stop them, and he stops walking abruptly. "I will, but I don't know what's going to happen when I come out the other side. I don't know what this is going to turn me into. I've already participated in the murder of, god, over twenty people, not to even include everything you have me staring in the face – "

"Will." Sims's voice is softer than usual from beside him. "Let me help you."

"How can you possibly help me?" Will snipes, unable to resist the urge. "Are you going to let me go, let me leave all this?"

"You know you can't." Sims hesitates. "What I can do is... drain the color, the feeling, from what you've seen to date. But I need to see you in person."

Will frowns, but Sims is obviously well-meaning right now, and far more powerful than he seems ready to admit. It's possible he's telling the truth. He glances away, but musters a response. "Fine," he says. "Where do you want to meet?"

"Here. The Institute. Whenever you can find the time." Sims catches his gaze, some form of determined sympathy in his face, as though attempting to impress his goodwill upon Will as firmly as possible. "I'll see you then."

"Yeah." Will glances away, and the shadows of the dream spread and fade into darkness as he drifts into full unconsciousness without Sims's presence.

When he wakes, Hannibal is asleep in the bed next to him. The clock says 2:16 AM.

Without hesitation, he goes.

* * *

Jon doesn't mind Will's arrival in the middle of the night. He only sleeps a few hours a night anyway.

"Tell me what you need me to hear," he says, the rush and thrum of compulsion pouring through his voice, and he sees it take hold in Will's face as he hits record. "Statement of Will Graham, on his experiences with fear."

"I'm a machine fueled by fear." Will's gaze is askance, but it seems more like he doesn't even want to register Jon as being in the room. "I'm not sure I would even know how to go about pushing myself forward without something to be afraid of, anymore. If all of my problems were solved, I wouldn't be anything at all. I know that. And I know where I am, who I'm talking to. I know you know exactly what I mean."

Will pulls in a breath. "For the longest time, the simpler fears ran my life, fear of death, fear of my own imagination getting the best of me with dreams of the faces of the dead. Basic cop stuff. A man stabbed me in the shoulder a long time ago, and even then I fought to come back because I knew I saw more and saw better than the other cops. But they wouldn't let me back. They could smell it on me. They didn't want me getting myself or someone else killed because I could see a monster in full color in person and froze, or worse. Probably for the best.

"No one else sees them the way I do." Will's hands worry the cuff of his shirt. "American psychiatrists dream of analyzing me. If it all turns out to be supernatural bullshit, it'd almost be a shame. I always hated being the freakshow in the halls of Quantico, but at least that way I was somehow special. This way I'm just cursed like the rest of you. Do you consider yourself cursed? I consider myself cursed."

There's the briefest pause, then the compulsion visibly rips over Will again, and forces words out of him. "I'd take the visions. I would. I would take all of that every day for the rest of my life if it means I don't have to feel the way I did today again, and again, and again, because of him. I don't hate it, and that's the problem. I don't hate the way my blood screams when I'm three steps away from taking them to the ground, I don't hate the way I can feel their heartbeats from feet away and want to rip out their throats. I don't hate the way I want to break their necks. I hate that I want to. I hate that this is who I am, or who I could be."

Jon just observes, feeds, but not without sympathy, as Will begins to tremble. "This is my fear," he says, "that this will eat me alive, and I'll hate myself for the rest of my life, that I'll kill myself to free myself, and until this last year I'd never even considered it, do you believe that? Someone as unstable as me and I'd never been suicidal, but now there are flashes, just flashes, where I think, this would be for the best. One life for however many I would take if I gave in. And I will give in. There's no question in my mind.

"Hannibal had me thinking I had a calculating psychopath living alongside me in my brain. It's worse than that. Right now, when we take on the next name on the list, and the next one after that, I become a beast, with no control over anything. Even when I do give in, I won't be the one making the decisions. The Hunt will. The Hunt will rule me, and I'll do as it says, and I will die inside if I don't kill myself first."

Will folds in on himself as he forces out the next. "I want to see. I'll look at anything. I'd rather see, I don't want to feel their heartbeats, I don't want to feel my teeth ache to tear out a throat, I don't want to be a monster. I'll stare into whatever abyss I'm given. I'm afraid of falling in. I'm so afraid."

Silence falls between them; Jon leans forward. "Statement ends," he concludes, and clicks the recorder off. Will stares at the edge of Jon's desk, and Jon decides not to watch him, to wait until he's gathered himself a bit, then finally speaks up. "Do you understand what just happened?"

"No," Will says, to the point. "I really don't."

"You told the truth." Jon draws the recorder closer, pops the tape out, and writes on its label. "You're being used."

"By whom?" Will is sardonic, and Jon supposes he can't blame him. "By you? By Hannibal? By Budge and Hopworth?"

"When you put it like that, a bit by everyone, but that's not what I meant." Jon leans back against his chair. "Hannibal Lecter is feeding off of you."

Will stares at him openly. "What?"

"Your fear of being a killer is moving straight to him, and to the Hunt," Jon clarifies. "He may have been doing this for as long as you've known him. It's only more egregious and obvious now that you're regularly hunting human beings for this purpose."

Another long pause settles between them, Will's expression fading into blankness before he answers. "Yes," he says. "That sounds about right."

Well, to hell with it. Jon goes for it. "With this in mind, we have to discuss whether or not Dr. Lecter can be trusted when the moment comes."

"You're trying to turn me against him," Will checks.

Jon scoffs. "He's doing a fair job of that himself." Will remains expressionless, and Jon observes with rising disbelief. "Or are you still on his side?"

"No." That, at least, readily comes to Will. "But I'm not going to kill him."

Jon sits forward, a weary motion. "Why not?" 

Will looks Jon in the face. "Because I owe his life to someone else." 

It's not completely true. Partially true, but Jon knows better. "You say you want to be free from the Hunt, but you won't strike the killing blow."

"Will the killing blow make me one of them for good?" Will retorts.

Jon knows when someone's talking around a point even when he isn't explicitly trying to use the Eye to know things about the situation. "I understand," he decides upon. "You're under a lot of pressure. I'll just ask that you remember the statement you've just made when the moment comes, and make a choice accordingly."

Will pushes the chair back as he stands, a half-defiant gesture. "He won't turn on us." He's firmer about this than he feels, Jon can sense it. "He has his reasons to do the right thing."

"All of them have reasons to do the right thing," Jon says steadily, "until they have a better reason to do the wrong thing."

Will turns away, and Jon watches him go, waiting until the door is closed behind him to contemplate the tape in front of him on the desk. He pops it back into the recorder, and hits record.

"Will Graham is a fatted calf of fear for Hannibal Lecter, one he can feed off of again and again without the slightest bit of remorse. Still, I don't think that's the overall game, here. While putting Will through these pains is offering Dr. Lecter a feast of fear near daily in this moment, and moving him closer to becoming an adherent to the Hunt, I don't think that's the full extent of what we're seeing."

Jon knows better than to voice out loud his real suspicions, and massages the truth slightly.

"Until I meet Dr. Lecter face-to-face again, I know that I can't know with any measure of certainty, but as of this moment there is no doubt in my mind that this hunting trip across the ocean is more than a gesture of goodwill to Elias Bouchard."

He files it in the locked door of his desk, not that it'll stop Elias from getting his hands on it if he deems it useful, and allows himself a pause to compose himself. The statement has sated him, but, as usual, he has more theories than solid fact. For a moment, though, he feels some relief at the usual abstractions of the Archive, in comparison to the wholly physical fear eating away at Will Graham with every passing day.

Small blessings, Jon concedes. It could always be worse.

* * *

Will takes it one breath at a time, these days. Abigail's quiet presence on the other end of the couch, with the sound of her turning pages in her book the only thing breaking the silence in the living room of their flat, is soft and mundane, so different from what rages in his skull.

It's been three months since Will agreed to flee across the ocean with Hannibal. They've offered fifty-five people to the Flesh to be mutilated for their purpose, and Will wishes he could picture each one in some form of apologetic respect, but they blur together; whether or not this is a defensive measure of his mind against the trauma or just a factor of there being so many faces and names is impossible to know for sure. If they hadn't begun to grab the homeless, it seems far more likely they would have been caught by now, but Will has a sense he can't base in any sort of outward logic that law enforcement has been convinced out of looking too closely at all of these disappearances.

Will has given up on ever contacting Jack again. He crossed the Rubicon at least fifty victims ago. Whatever he does now, he does it on his own.

Jonathan Sims appears about once a week to him, now. Sometimes it's conversational, Sims prepared to listen to Will as his agitation rises free of Hannibal's gaze holding him back, and sometimes it's the nightmares roiling through him with Sims watching over him. He accepts them both. He needs the comfort and he deserves the pain.

Tonight, foreboding hangs over him at the knowledge of what's coming tomorrow. Budge means to have the performance of their composer's piece at seven PM with the Flesh's orchestra the next day, and Will thinks of the dizziness that overtook him at a mere two minutes of a violin solo all those weeks ago. A full sixty minutes, looking on at instruments built out of flesh and bone, will overwhelm him in a way that even the hunting with Hannibal couldn't hope to touch.

Hannibal sits in the nearby chair and leans forward onto his knees, hoping to catch Will's eye. "It's time for dinner," he says. "We should get ready."

Will laughs, short and dark. "I don't want to go."

"I'm afraid it would be impolite to say no."

Abigail makes a slightly amused sound. "We can't be rude, can we?"

"Certainly not," Hannibal agrees. "Did you plan to change?"

Will looks down at his normal clothes. "Do you think Budge cares what I'm going to wear?"

"This is a special occasion." Hannibal raises his eyebrows. "There are expectations."

Will rolls his eyes without any sort of malice, and moves to stand. With each passing day, just moving feels like a monumental effort, as though his sins are piled on top of his shoulders. He scratches his head and moves to the master bedroom to open up the suitcase he's still living out of to find something a bit less worn-out and basic like himself, something that will allow him to pretend he's at all like the two other people at the table.

"We will be back well before bedtime," Hannibal is advising Abigail as Will moves back into the main space of the flat. He offers Will a smile. "Come," he directs to him. "We should have a brief discussion before we go."

Will is already dreading this, but Hannibal guides him by the arm to the front hall, and Will looks expectantly at Hannibal as he measures his words. "You did the right thing," Hannibal decides upon.

Will starts to laugh, an unpleasant sound, unable to resist. "Come on."

Hannibal shakes his head. "You must know it's true."

"You don't know what I know," Will says, with an edge. "You don't know what I'm dealing with right now."

"I know you, Will." Hannibal tips Will's face up with the slightest touch to his chin, and holds his gaze. "I know that this has been difficult for you. I also know that the future, so long as we prevent this ritual, is more promising than you could believe."

"And what is our future?" Will retorts.

"I wouldn't ruin the surprise." Hannibal touches his elbow to guide him forward. "Come. We have somewhere to be."

To Will's surprise, Budge is hosting this dinner in his London flat, away from the church and the orchestra, but the question dies on his lips as Budge ushers them inside with the apologetic explanation, "I'm afraid Jared won't be with us tonight. Someone must look after our work."

"Of course." Hannibal wears a small smile. "The menu is as we discussed?"

Budge laughs, sounding genuinely amused. "Why would we waste such lovely work, Dr. Lecter? We've been preparing this meal for a long time."

Will has a growing sense of dread, but he supposes it can't be worse than the last months, picking away at his meals with Hannibal knowing that they're victims in perfectly-made sauces. Budge guides them to the table to sit, then disappears further into the flat; Will stops and stares, taking the sight of the table in.

It's reminiscent of Hannibal's more lavish dinners back in the US, with an artistic tableau. At the center of the centerpiece rests a bloody and pulsing human heart, its jerky motion at a steady rate, as though at some kind of peace despite its separation from its owner. Garlands curl around the heart, with four pomegranates resting in a square. Hannibal moves Will to a chair bodily, has him sit, and takes a seat beside him.

"Shall we?" Hannibal asks, amiable enough, and takes up the knife resting at the perfect position for a formal dinner as well as one of the pomegranates. "Don't worry," he adds to Will, "I have full permission to indulge." He carves into the fruit carefully.

It bleeds. Only for a moment, but Will still stares, his throat tight, as the blood dribbles along the skin of the fruit. Once he's carved through it, Hannibal opens it demonstratively to show raw flesh along the inside of the fruit, and seeds of tender, bloody flesh crowded within.

"Go on," Hannibal says, soft, a challenge in his eyes. Will is frozen, desperate to flee, for the first and worst time truly prey within a trap, then Hannibal's set the fruit aside and drawn Will to him gently, forehead to his and fingers in the hair at the back of his neck. "You know you are capable of this, Will," he whispers.

"That's the problem," Will gets out.

"You don't need to fight it." Hannibal's breath is warm on his face. "You know that you are home."

Will isn't sure he's ever had a home. He's not sure he knows what home would feel like if he strained to try. All he knows is that sitting at this table, seeing the heart pulse and the fruit crack open, might well have broken him. Hannibal withdraws, and Will presses his eyes shut firmly for a moment as though to wake himself up; when he opens them again, Hannibal has fished seeds from the pomegranate, with a question in his face.

Only an instant of regret passes before Will opens his mouth, and Hannibal slips the seeds inside, fingers lingering for only a moment past his lips. The blood is sweet, warm, and Will wishes it would drive him to vomit. It doesn't. He trembles.

Budge sets out each of their plates. "Dry-aged ribeye," he announces. "So prepared by Dr. Lecter."

"Ah, I merely began the process," Hannibal dismisses. "The preparation is yours to claim, Tobias. Shall we?"

Will silently carves and picks at the ribeye, and he can faintly sense the image of the woman it came from: a plain Chinese woman edging on middle-age, her smile as thin as her clothes remained in the winter on the streets of the city. He doesn't know if it's preferable to imagine that he's sensed some part of her presence here, or if her death was the end for her along with all of those before her in the parade of those sacrificed in service of Budge's and Hopworth's masters.

Hannibal and Budge seem to be having a conversation. Will isn't interested. The heart pulses in the center of the table, and his eyes are fixed on it. There's an intense sense to him that the room is crowded with people, the air heavy with presence, but it's only the three of them sitting at the table. He presses his eyes shut, opens them again, and knows each one of the dead hovering around their murderers as though their minds and hearts and bodies are files he can flick through in his head. The woman at the front of the group is named Kayley, the dark-haired one on whose throat Budge played that awful tune. She had recently lost her child and became homeless due to drug abuse, and without words asks Will to remember her.

"I promise," Will murmurs, near inaudibly, and catches Hannibal's gaze. Will shakes his head, and digs his fingers into the pomegranate, the flesh squishing under the pressure as he pulls out the sweet seeds. Hannibal's gaze is soft for a moment, then he turns away and back to Budge for some grandiose conversation that Will can't bring himself to listen to.

Hannibal seems to sense that Will isn't mentally prepared for much more than the dinner, and dismisses the offer for a drink after; Will shakes Budge's hand on the way out, barely meeting his eyes, and Hannibal steers him out of the door.

Once in the car, Will manages to speak. "I don't want to see him again."

Hannibal is rarely openly skeptical, but Will's managed to pry such an emotion out of him. "Will."

Will shakes his head. "I'll go tomorrow. But if he doesn't die, I never want to see him again."

"You didn't enjoy the meal," Hannibal deduces wryly.

Will shoots a look at him. "I didn't enjoy the company."

"Even mine?"

It seems to be a genuine question, much to Will's surprise. He's not sure how to answer at first, but then it's clear enough. "I can't get away from you," he says, his throat too tense to easily get it out. "I know that."

Hannibal contemplates that as he drives. "Is that so bad?"

"I thought it would be easier." Will clears his throat in some effort to relax it, then goes on, dry. "Maybe we overdid it."

"There would be gentler ways to introduce you to the Hunt than the last months," Hannibal concedes. "But I think I have well proved your natural inclination and talents."

"And what is my 'natural inclination'?" Will retorts, despite himself.

"The heat of the chase." Hannibal glances at him, expression unreadable. "Don't you agree?"

Will bites back the accusations he wants to fling Hannibal's way. "What happens? Once we've fulfilled your duty to Bouchard?"

"That is up to you." It's a surprising answer, and Will stiffens; Hannibal goes on. "I understand there's a job opening at the Archive. It might well suit you."

Will doesn't know what to think in the least. "I thought you wanted me to be a hunter."

"Elias seems convinced it's possible to do both." Hannibal is being more cavalier about this than Will is prepared for, honestly. "He's retained hunters before, and... it is possible you could still see on behalf of the Eye while hunting alongside me." There's a terrible, brief silence, then Hannibal adds, "Or Abigail and I could move on, and leave you to your work."

Nausea rolls over Will like a wave. "Hannibal," he forces out.

"You fear the Hunt." Hannibal pauses. "Ultimately... I want the best for you, Will."

An unbelievable premise, but Hannibal seems to at least think he's sincere about it. "You would let me go?"

"You act as though I hold you hostage."

What a joke. Will stares at him. "What's your goal here?" he asks, abrupt. "What are you actually trying to achieve, beyond playing this game and the next and the next beyond that?"

Hannibal is silent for a moment. "A full life." There's something different in his tone, something Will's never heard even after all these months, and it makes him stiffen in the seat. Hannibal isn't finished, his voice light, quiet. "I have been alone for a very long time, Will."

Will's breath comes out shaky. "I saw all of them, every name on that list. I know them, now, I know what we did."

Hannibal's tone is still different in that near imperceptible way. "And are you sorry?"

"I'm sorry that I'm not sorry." Will presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I'm sorry that I can excuse it to myself. I'm sorry I can't apologize properly to anyone that I've hurt."

"You must accept what you are," Hannibal says, gentle, "or change it."

"I don't know _what_ I am," Will snaps, and pulls in unsteady breaths. "I just – need to go home."

"Of course." Hannibal doesn't look at him. Will has some sense that he's done or said something wrong, but he can't place it and doesn't have the energy to work it out. He hides in the master bedroom yet again, curls up without shedding any of his nice clothes beyond his shoes, and sleeps, desperate for some comfort even from the likes of Jonathan Sims.

The light in the dream is dim, but Will can still see the blade in Hannibal's hand as he faces Abigail, who lifts her chin as Hannibal presses the flat against her neck. Neither seems completely perturbed with the situation, as though the threat of a slit throat is commonplace, and Will is frozen.

Realization floods him, soaks into him as though it clings his clothing to him and marks him indelibly. Hannibal will kill her. Will has two choices and two choices only if he doesn't want Abigail to haunt him more than she already has.

There's a gun in his hands now. He points it at Hannibal, who looks around at him, eyes black in the dull light of the dream. He can't fire.

"Why not?" Sims asks, from behind him.

Will blinks, and Hannibal and Abigail are gone; they're somewhere Will doesn't recognize, a cramped house apparently populated by at least an old woman by the look of it. He looks around at Sims, who's watching him with an easy enough expression. "I don't know," he answers honestly.

Sims exhales. "When is it?"

"Tomorrow." Will swipes a hand over his face. "I was going to email you."

"It's fine. This suffices." The deadpan is strangely reassuring, casual, as though a conversation between friendly enough work acquaintances. "How are you faring, Will?"

"What kind of question is that?" Will can't help but muster the slightest unhappy smile.

"I thought it might help to say it out loud." Sims raises his eyebrows. "What do you think?"

Sims isn't a gentle person, but the light touch of the conversation is more than enough to tip Will over into trembling again. "I need this to end."

"I can't do that for you." Sims hesitates. "But I can give you one small thing."

"What?" Will asks, anxiety breaking through despite himself.

The light around them shimmers into greens and blues, and they stand on the edge of a stream, water lapping at the stony shore, trees vivid around them. Will's breath catches in his throat, and he reaches down to seize the fishing rod he knows will be there, to tie on the elegant fly lure in easy, comfortable motions.

"You can always come to this place," Sims says, just audible enough over the rush of the water. "If you allow yourself to See."

Emotion is catching in Will's chest despite himself. "Do you have a place you go?" he asks.

"Yes." Sims holds his gaze once Will looks to him. "Take your time," he tells Will. "Stay as long as you need to."

"Thank you." Will means it, more than anything else he's said to the man. Sims glances away with an ironic, unhappy smile, and is gone the instant Will's gaze slips away from him.

Will wades into the stream, casts, and takes in the light as it flashes against the water, just as briefly at peace.

* * *

Jon sends the email reminder at 2 PM, well in advance of the ritual. One hour passes, two, a perfectly reasonable amount of time for someone to _not_ see an email, but no reply and no Martin after two and a half, then three hours, and he's starting to bristle in spite of himself. There's a knock on the office door; Jon snaps "Come in," and presses his face into his hands, exhausted, adding to Basira as she slips inside, "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Basira says, and she genuinely doesn't seem bothered. "We should leave now if we want to be there with a little time to spare. I have the car packed."

"Fantastic." Jon could rip his hair out from agitation. "Fine. Fine, let's go."

"He's not coming." It's so blunt that Jon looks up with genuine surprise, and Basira doesn't look ready to apologize or soften the statement. "We're on our own."

If he accepts it, it's going to hurt, even though it shouldn't. He shouldn't be so invested in these people, maybe. He shouldn't expect loyalty. Wouldn't that be easier? "I know."

"Then it's time to go."

Jon checks his email one last time – still no response – and follows Basira out of the building to her car. Everything is packed as promised, and as usual he can't help but admire Basira's direct determination to do exactly what needs doing, from packing to murdering two monsters as they try to end the world. He's committed, but he's not as calm about it by any stretch of the imagination.

They listen to a podcast as they drive out to the church, Basira's choice, a deep dive history podcast that Jon is honestly comforted in hearing – frankly, more comforted than if they were to have a long conversation on the way. It reminds him of long, half-drunk discussions in the back of bars near close when he was in university, on history, philosophy, and Greek theatre. Far simpler times. Back then he never would have anticipated this kind of pressure from a job, the supernatural aside. Young Jonathan Sims was fairly sure he'd be a functionary somewhere and little else.

They pull up to the church in the dying light of the day within a few minutes of the podcast ending, and Basira wastes no time. "Leave the car doors open," she advises. "They could hear a pin drop in a place like this, and we might need a quick getaway as it is."

Jon nods briskly, and slips out of the car. He takes the flamethrower from the back, gingerly, feeling incredibly absurd, but probably no less than Basira as she moves the heavily modified pressure washer out with a quick motion. "You're more likely to survive this than I am," she says, near conversationally, "so I'm just going to ask one thing." He stares at her, and she goes on, apparently accepting that as an answer. "Don't do anything stupid if I die, all right? And if it looks like I'm dead, don't stick around, just go."

"Basira," Jon warns, not amused. "I'm not going to – "

"I said what I said," Basira says evenly. "Now let's go."

They creep inside. There's already the sound of instruments audible from the back of the church, but it seems to be more along the line of tuning than any sort of actual performance. As they get closer, Jon hears the faintest conversation; all he can make out is Hopworth's rumbling voice and one or two others. They halt well in sight of the orchestra, still hidden, and Jon's breath comes out short at the sight of the human instruments, perfectly preserved, dressed, and carved into the pieces necessary. Wind and brass instruments made of bone, some with flesh still clinging and bleeding along their edges, are lovingly held by the same sort of flayed and physically distorted men and women who flank the open-throated bodies who will now serve as strings.

"Wow," Basira murmurs, and it seems like an understatement.

Budge moves to the center of the aisle, taps the music stand there with a conductor's baton, and clears his throat. Hopworth drags a blond, middle-aged man to the center of the orchestra, and it takes everything with Jon not to rush forward as Hopworth slits the man's throat in a short motion that streaks blood across the air before he drops him to the ground to bleed. Budge's baton goes up, and the orchestra begins to play.

Something horrible and sickening ripples through the air as soon as the music hits them, and Jon glances at Basira and the flat expression on her face as she tries to ignore the power radiating off of the atonal work being played, doing his absolute damnedest to remain calm. "Now," he checks.

"Now," Basira agrees, and he lets her lead the way.

They really only have a few moments' time to get away with this, at most, and Jon is intent to get in and get out if at all possible, though he's not entirely optimistic. Basira gets into position, then turns on the pressure washer and blasts the entire orchestra with acetone.

"HOPWORTH," Budge shouts, and that's probably their sign to get moving. Jon aims the flamethrower at the stream of acetone, and flames pour over the orchestra.

" _Keep playing_ ," Budge rightly screams over the noise; Jared Hopworth appears around the corner, only to be cornered and stabbed in the shoulder by Lecter, who rips a streak of red across his shoulder to catch his attention. Hopworth snorts and slaps Lecter away against the wall and into an unconscious heap on the floor.

Shit. Jon follows Basira's lead, aiming the fire blast at Hopworth, but he dodges the blast and rushes them with inhuman speed. Jon scrambles, but Hopworth isn't aiming to take him down, just to smash the flamethrower out of Jon's hands and seize Basira instead.

There's an inhuman scream from the direction of the orchestra, but that could be anything, and Jon focuses on looking Basira in the face as the scent of cooked flesh, acetone, and smoke overwhelms nearly everything else. The orchestra's sound is slowly dying and fading away, the power ebbing away. "Let her go, now," Jon shouts over the chaos, compulsion thrumming over his voice.

"Jon," Basira shouts. "Don't be stupid!" 

Hopworth laughs, half a growl, breaks Basira's arm in such a harsh motion it forces a scream out of her and her bone through her flesh, then slams her to the ground. Jon rushes to her, ignoring Hopworth, who doesn't seem intent on moving yet. "I told you to go," Basira retorts, every bit of her gritted against the pain.

"You're not dead, are you?" Jon retorts, and tries to pull her to her feet, gaze tight on Hopworth, who takes a step, two, forward. Before he reaches them, the wall of flame separating them from the orchestra is breached all at once by Budge, bloody, face maimed and a red blur where one of his eyes once was. Hopworth starts to laugh. 

Basira screams in Jon's arms, and he watches as the bone poking out starts to rip through her flesh further. "Stop," Jon demands, with as much of his power as he can possibly summon. "It's over!"

"This is a waste of time." Budge's tone is some mix of practical and crazed, but Jon doesn't have the opportunity to retort, as Budge gestures, and pain streaks through him. Jon falls to the ground, and drops Basira; he shudders, whimpers, screams, and has no recourse as Hopworth drags him from the building and throws him into the back of a van.

* * *

According to Hannibal, all is well.

The world was not bent to the Flesh's will, and the orchestra melted away into a horrific scene of animated corpses cooking away as they tried to play their failing instruments. The burnt-out husk of the church and its contents will be a horror scene for some police officers to find in good time. Will hasn't had the courage to call it in. He doesn't want to speak to police, maybe ever again.

What Will chooses to remember is that he managed to save Hannibal and Basira from the blaze. It's one of the few heroic things he's ever done. Basira thanked him in short order and climbed into her car to drive home one-handed to mind the bone sticking out from her shoulder, and, he assumes, made her way to a hospital.

Hannibal hasn't seemed too bothered by the blow to the head and the bruises he's received, but Will speaks up anyway as they sit in the flat, Hannibal silently paging through a book on the couch beside him. "I should check on your head."

"Will," Hannibal says, about as firm as he gets, but Will shakes his head and gets to his feet, crossing behind the couch to carefully slip his fingers into Hannibal's hair and check on the harsh lump left by Hopworth striking him against the wall. Hannibal breathes in sharply as Will touches it, and Will shushes him gently.

"It's coming along," Will decides, and leans against the couch, his fingers still absently curled in Hannibal's hair. "We need to have a discussion."

"I see." Hannibal pauses. "Are you troubled, still?"

Will laughs abruptly. "I've been troubled my entire life, and I'll be troubled for the rest of it."

"You know what I'm referring to." Hannibal's half-chiding. "The actions we took. What you've discovered about yourself. Does it trouble you?"

"Yes." There's no point in lying about that. He exhales. "What happened to Sims?"

Will can't see Hannibal's face, but it's clear he's hesitating, formulating the right thing to say, and musters an "I don't know."

It's not sufficient. "Will they kill him?"

"I doubt they can." Hannibal shifts, turns to face him a bit, and what he's hiding from his expression says more than the expression itself. "He's more powerful than you may think."

"Fine, they won't kill him," Will says, rapid-fire, and forces himself to hold Hannibal's gaze. "What will they do to him?"

"I don't know," Hannibal repeats.

Will makes an impatient sound, more frustrated with himself than anything, and drops his head. Hannibal brushes a hand over Will's arm, some small comfort, but it's not enough. "I owe him." Will knows that. "He was there for me each step of the way. I know he's not kind, or even human, but I swear he did more than he had to to keep me sane. I don't know how far I would've gotten without him."

Hannibal is clearly watching Will with interest. "What do you mean to do?"

It's his turn to say it. "I don't know." Will sucks in a breath, abrupt again. "What can I do?"

"May I be honest?" When Will looks up at Hannibal, his eyes are different, somehow bright but calculating. Will gives him a sharp nod, unfortunately unsure he can hold Hannibal's gaze when he's looking at Will like that, but the moment doesn't seem to allow him that luxury. "I would ask you not to risk yourself for someone you barely know."

A frankly awful, selfish thing to say. "Hannibal," Will starts pointedly.

"What do you know about Jonathan Sims?" Hannibal persists. "He knows about you. That is what the Archivist does. That does not make him your friend. You didn't confide in him. He stole those thoughts, those memories from you."

Will bristles a little. "I never said he was my friend. But he doesn't deserve whatever they'll be doing to him."

Hannibal watches him, as though waiting for some sign that Will has surrendered. "Leave it to the Institute. They are, as it happens, better equipped."

Will laughs sharply. "You think _Elias Bouchard_ is going to put his efforts into saving his Archivist? I know what he is."

"And what is he?" Hannibal inquires.

Will swipes a hand over his face. "I know he chose to let Jonathan Sims be captured."

Hannibal looks terribly interested now. "What could he do from the Institute?"

"I don't – " Like Sims had said, he can't see the puzzle pieces for the whole picture sometimes. "I just know. He chose. When you see every possible movement of every possible piece, you don't let your queen be checkmated unless you mean to lose."

"I doubt Elias has lost." Hannibal contemplates that. "I understand he is difficult to trust, being who and what he is. But perhaps you are making something of a leap due to your sense of loyalty to the Archivist."

Will frowns. "You think I'm projecting."

"I think you want someone to blame, and Elias choosing to harm or 'checkmate' the Archivist is an easier answer than the unfortunate confluence of events that took place beyond any of our control."

Technically, he has a point, but Will still doesn't buy it. "And if I do something about it?"

Hannibal pauses. "That is your choice. But I know you are at greater risk of dying than Jonathan Sims if you interject yourself into these events, and Abigail and I would rather you remain safe and with us here."

As usual, Hannibal twists the knife of Abigail whenever Will _acts out_. He's bristling again. "I get it." He dares to meet Hannibal's gaze again. "What next?"

"That depends on you." Hannibal's got the ghost of smile on his lips, and it reaches his eyes for once. "What do you want to do?"

Will wants to hide in his mind, wading into the stream, freedom from the guilt that wages war against his mind every day as the dead haunt him. But that's not on the table, is it?

"I want peace," he says. "I want to feel something pure, something real, something that I can understand."

"I can give you that." Hannibal's voice is soft now. "If you will trust me."

"What will you give me?" Will challenges, but he's hushed as well, unable to resist matching Hannibal in this moment. "What can you possibly do for me, after all of this, after what you had me do?"

"Did I make you act?" Hannibal's gaze is open, strangely vulnerable now. "Did I force your hand? Or did you choose to hunt alongside me?"

"I don't know," Will manages. "I don't remember, it's all a blur."

"I don't know why you still resist." Hannibal is so gentle, now. "You know what you are. You know what you felt when you hunted beside me."

"I don't want to be a hunter," Will whispers, his throat aching. "I don't want to be a killer."

"You know that isn't true." Hannibal reaches across the distance between them, and touches Will's cheek, the lightest contact, and Will moves against it, startled but piqued. "Murder is the only thing you understand. Do you disagree?"

It hurts. "Hannibal." He's an instant away from begging openly. "Please."

Hannibal brushes his thumb across Will's cheek in a deliberate gesture, and Will feels every instant of it spark across him. He closes his eyes.

"Do you hate me, Will?"

It startles him, but he doesn't open his eyes, worried what he'll see in Hannibal's face. The truth leaves his mouth whether he likes it or not. "No."

Then Hannibal's mouth is against his, and Will falls into it more readily than he ever would have imagined, drawing closer, his breath caught in his chest. He realizes in a rush as Hannibal draws back beyond fractionally, less than an inch away, that he can't let this end because it can never happen again, and he needs this, just once.

Will kisses him again, his hands moving to draw Hannibal closer by the shoulder and the small of his back, hungry for this single, utterly uncomplicated feeling he'll only get in this moment. Hannibal is the first to withdraw, his breaths unsteadier than Will has ever seen them, plain emotion caught in his chest, too overwhelmed to speak.

"Is this a game?" Will murmurs, so soft his voice nearly breaks.

The slightest half-laugh escapes Hannibal. "That would be simpler."

It feels selfish, to relish this, but Will needs some small measure of comfort, and this contact, this real moment, is more than enough. He kisses Hannibal once more, insistent, and Hannibal breaks away once more to brush his lips against Will's cheek and rest against him.

"So?" Will prompts, tone low.

"As you will," Hannibal answers, his fingers toying with Will's hair.

It's easier to make this mistake than make the mistake of attempting to save Jonathan Sims's life from forces he can barely comprehend nonetheless properly fight. Will moves to his feet and pulls Hannibal to his to guide him to the bedroom and the bed they have shared for months without the slightest openly intimate touch between them, until now.

Hannibal's hands are against his bare skin within minutes, his knee between Will's thigh to spread them apart, their mouths fierce against each other; Will has never been so breathlessly happy and clear-headed in his life, and it's terrifying beyond measure in a way he can't allow himself to deal with now.

Trouble can wait until tomorrow morning.

* * *

"D'you think they'll come for him?" 

Hopworth doesn't eat as delicately as Budge does, Jon notes, the tiniest microcosm of the differences between the two despite their similar appetites for destruction. Hopworth carves and gnaws. Budge is fastidiously cutting pieces of meat, taking slow bites, tasting, savoring. The one thing Jon can't tell on either of their faces is whether they care at all where the meat's come from or if it was just a matter of convenience on their part to hack directly into each of his legs and rip out flesh for dinner's sake.

Jon will not eat. He has some dignity left. Two days of this aren't enough to break him.

Budge answers, at long last, the lightly-piped in music Jon thinks might be Vivaldi filling the silence until he does. "Bouchard has put too much effort into this Archivist to let us keep him as a pet for long. We need to make use of him while we can."

"What use is he?" Hopworth points out. "Past dinner."

"That reminds me." Budge clears his throat as he looks at Jon with his one working eye, a hollow hole where the left once was. "Eat."

"No thank you," Jon says stiffly.

"It was an effort to bring this to the table, Archivist, I would appreciate it if you'd at least try."

"I'm not hungry."

It's a lie. Jon is starving. He also aches for a cigarette. All of this is secondary to the dull ache of both stumps of his currently regenerating legs, but it's more comforting to think of the human needs than the eldritch ones.

"One bite," Hopworth cajoles, a smirk in his tone. "Don't be rude now."

Jon stares Budge in the face, cuts into the meat on his plate to take it up on his fork and chew, maintaining eye contact all the way.

"Good," Budge decides. "As for your use to us, Archivist, I had a thought or two."

Jon's tone is brittle. "I don't intend to be useful."

"You will." Budge's smile is a barely there threat. "We've lost our chance at the ritual, but we're sorely lacking in information to use to seek revenge."

"Budge, I don't care about revenge," Hopworth says, dismissive. "We lost, we can do what we want now."

"You didn't lose what I lost," Budge says abruptly, head twisting in irritation.

"So you lost an eye and fucked up your face." Hopworth shrugs. "Least we got an Archivist for a while. If you want to try to kill him you can."

"I'm not sure we can manage it." Budge's expression makes it clear he'd like to, though. "He's already halfway healed after we took a saw to him."

Hopworth laughs, an awful sound. "I'm into testing limits."

"Do what you want," Jon says shortly. "I'm not helping you do anything."

Budge laughs, now, too, less pleased than Hopworth by a mile. "Give me Will Graham, and I'll let you go."

"No." Jon looks Budge in the face once again, unintimidated. "Is that all?"

"Take him." Budge shoves his chair back. "I'll clean up here."

Hopworth snorts. "Take him where?"

"Anywhere you want. Do anything you want to him. He's earned it." Budge clears the table briskly. "I'll be by to watch in just a moment."

Hopworth contemplates Jon as Budge takes his plate, then gets up and moves to haul Jon over his shoulder into the living room. He drops Jon without much grace onto the couch, and pins him down with two hands, others seeking to open his trousers.

"No," Jon snaps off, but struggling is doing nothing, and the violins are bright as the sound of Budge's music drifts faintly from the other room. Hopworth doesn't seem remotely interested in Jon's reaction to all this, happy enough to yank down what remains of his threadbare and destroyed trousers from the amputation and bare his cock. "Absolutely n – "

A hand slams over Jon's mouth, and biting into it does no good whatsoever. One of Hopworth's hand wraps around Jon's cock in an effort to jerk him and get him hard. It's not even a question in Jon's mind whether or not to continue resisting; anything less would be submission to this, and he's not frightened enough to do that.

Hopworth's provided some lube to the hand now with pointed spit into the palm, and Jon's chest shudders at the firm strokes. His cock is reacting anyway, and he makes an infuriated sound into Hopworth's fingers.

"You like it," Hopworth retorts, awful breath on Jon's face. "Bet I got something else you'd like." Jon wants to retort, but he can barely catch his breath from the strain of resisting, of the unwanted arousal, of the fingers pressing into his mouth. He makes as pointed a noise as he can, but Hopworth just laughs low in his throat and yanks down his own trousers.

Jon fights as best he can against him as soon as he feels the too-massive cock against what remains of his thigh, but even if Hopworth wasn't the massive creature he was Jon has very little by way of leverage or strength after they _cut his fucking legs off_. Hopworth spits again and starts to shove his fingers into Jon's arse.

"Fuck you," Jon snaps off into Hopworth's fingers, not caring if it's muffled, because letting the violation go unanswered is too much for him. He shudders as Hopworth's huge fingers force deeper inside of him until Hopworth grunts as though satisfied with what he's found, and fingers him for a few moments longer to the tune of Jon's short breaths until he yanks them out. He spits one more time, and rubs it over his cock before pushing the tip inside of Jon.

It's so, so much worse. The cock's dimensions are honestly to the level of parody, like a dildo sold in sex shops you'd only buy as a joke, just under half a meter long and thick. It's easier to think about all that than it is to realize he's shaking with every agonizing inch that Hopworth persists in pushing inside of him.

Jon bites into Hopworth's hand again, then again, then the hand on Jon's cock rips through his shirt and _into his chest_ and he shudders and screams into the motion as something crackles and snaps and pulls from inside of him, once and again. He doesn't get a chance to steady his heart or pull in air, as Hopworth shifts and rams two sharp objects against the shoulders of his shirt to pin him down, and the knowledge sinks in with no chance for him to stop it: _his ribs_. He can't resist as well as before now, even as Hopworth wraps a hand around Jon's cock again and starts to jerk him off all over again. He tries to shove back, but gets a sharp shove of the cock even deeper inside of him instead, and it makes Jon's body go stiff and his cock pulse.

Hopworth seems satisfied enough at how much he's got buried into Jon's arse, and starts to fuck him, at first in short thrusts, then hard and pointed, and it _hurts_ oh fuck it hurts. Jon fights back as fiercely as he can, teeth tearing into Hopworth's hand and every inch of him resisting, but his hips still arch terribly. Hopworth laughs at that. "Knew you'd like it."

Jon makes a sound of dismissive irritation as best he can, but for some completely frustrating reason his cock isn't on board with the intensity of this horror and the tension and pain of Hopworth's immense cock ripping into him, and he shudders out an agonized groan. Nearly every thrust is a strike to his prostate in spite of the way he's sure Hopworth is going to find blood when he pulls out, and Hopworth's hand is still tight and wet around his cock; Jon doesn't want to come, he can't come, he has to hold himself back with every bit of control he can possibly salvage.

But it's too much, and Jon shakes, shudders, and he bites into Hopworth's hand one more time as hard as he can and comes, near tears and whimpering as he comes down from the climax. He struggles as hard as he can, but he realizes too quickly that _Hopworth isn't done_. It's possible Hopworth can be as hard as he wants for as long as he wants, maybe come whenever he wants, and of course that won't be easy and simple and fast.

"Stop," Jon shouts into Hopworth's hand, then screams from frustration into it. Hopworth laughs deep in his throat, and leans in after a heavy thrust to pronounce:

"Made you come. Knew you liked a cock. I could smell it on you."

Jon stares him in the face; his eyes water, but he won't cry. He shoves against Hopworth. He won't give in.

"I'll get you," Hopworth decides, and slams the hand muffling Jon against his throat instead, choking him pointedly as he keeps fucking him. Jon groans and twists and tries to claw away, but he sinks into agony and darkness within moments.

Jon stands in his childhood bedroom. Will Graham hovers a few feet from him, facing half-away. Neither speaks for a long moment, and Jon's throat aches even within the dream.

"They're coming for me." He has to believe that. "Aren't they?"

"I don't know." Will can barely look his way. "What are they doing to you?"

"Nothing you want to hear." Jon thinks, in this space, he could cry. "Send them to me. Whoever they can get. Send them, now."

"Jon." It's the first time that Will has acknowledged him as anything but _Archivist_ or _Sims_ , and that catches Jon's attention in spite of everything else. "I owe you."

Jon very nearly breaks down, but manages to hold back. "You think I lived up to my promise?" he tries to offer dryly.

"I'm alive. I have to live with myself, but I'm alive." Will's breath comes out sharp. "I won't leave you behind."

"I'm a stranger." Jon's voice is soft, now, his throat aching. "You don't know me."

"I know enough." Will meets his gaze, now, and he finds gentle, if unsteady, determination there. "Hold out as best you can."

Jon presses his face into his hands and tries to breathe evenly, but even if he can't feel the pain and the bruising in his dream state, he _remembers_ , and it's too much. "All right," he whispers. "All right."

Will is gone when he looks up, and Jon sinks to the carpeted floor of his old room to trace the patterns and hold back from tears of surrender until the darkness envelops him.

* * *

When he's shoved out of the dream, Will knows Jonathan Sims for a moment, knows him in a way he can't comprehend, but the deep imprint of his mind to Will's is overwhelmed by the pure agony that flashes through him in the instant. He desperately pulls in breaths, retches over the side of the bed, and clutches at his body before he can stop himself. But he's in one piece.

Jon is not.

It's six AM. Hannibal normally wakes in about half an hour, and hasn't stirred. Will fights back nausea as he slips out of bed as silently as he can to pull on clothes, take his gun, and get the hell out of the flat. He makes his way through the living room, and stops abruptly at the sound of someone moving behind him.

"Where are you going?"

Abigail's voice is just a shade above soft, but not loud enough to wake Hannibal, as though she knows he's doing something he shouldn't. She stands in her pajamas, hair mussed, expression far less so. Frankly, she looks as though she was expecting this.

"I'm not running away." Will's throat is tight. "I have something I need to do."

"You're doing something dangerous." Abigail looks so closely at him he feels her gaze burning through him. "Is it worth it?"

"Yes." Will doesn't even hesitate. "I can't live with myself if I don't do this." His breaths tremble yet, the tremors of the flash of Jon's horror still in his bones. "I need to do one good thing, Abigail. I can't live with myself if I don't."

Abigail glances away, then, a short motion. "What should I tell him?"

"That I'm paying back a debt." Will looks back to the door, resists the wave of nausea, and checks his holster from habit before he moves to leave.

"You'd better come back," Abigail calls quietly after him. He can't get himself to answer. He goes.

The Magnus Institute itself is just waking as he gets there, but everyone he needs is there. Basira, her arm in a sling, is the one to greet him once he's made his way to the Archive proper, and unlocks an office to sit him inside to wait. There's a burst of loud conversation down the hall, then a man Will doesn't recognize pushes inside of the office and stops short as he sees Will. "Where is he?" he demands.

Will exhales. "I don't know."

"She said you knew what was going on," the man presses, anxiety vibrating off of him in waves.

" _Martin._ " Basira edges him into the office and shuts the door behind them. "He didn't say he got an address, he says he knew what was happening to Jon."

"So what's happening to him?" Martin retorts in Will's direction.

Will has the idea that telling Martin all the details is a bad idea. "We should find out where he is and go."

"And how do we find out where he is?" Basira cuts in, before Martin can snap out something similar.

"Elias," Martin says instantly.

Basira sighs. "If Elias knew he would've sent us there already."

"I don't know if that's true." Will meets Basira's gaze. "I think you know that Bouchard knows more than he ever tells."

"Obviously," Martin says, waspish. "But why would he want his Archivist to potentially _die_?"

"He won't die." Basira is a touch grim. "That's why we need to get him back. Well, that's one reason."

"Oh god." Martin tenses even further, and paces, visibly overwhelmed. " _Fuck_ , I need to, this is – "

Basira clearly isn't in the mood for this. "Martin, we need you, so stop it."

"Fine," Martin snaps out, and balks as Basira reaches behind her and pulls a gun from her belt to push into his hands. "Basira – "

"Stop," Basira repeats. "We'll get the information from Elias and we'll go."

There's a polite knock on the door behind Basira, and she turns, expressionless, to open it and reveal Elias Bouchard himself. "So?" Basira asks, to the point.

Elias gestures for Basira to extend her hand, and presses something into her palm. "Careful, now," he warns, a little too casually. "They won't be quite as interested in playing with their food as they are with Jon, if you fail."

"If you knew," Will says flatly, "why didn't you send us sooner?"

Elias's answer is swift. "I needed you and Martin. I knew you would come, and that Martin would eventually bring himself to break away from his ultimate goals for the time being. But without you, Basira wasn't enough, even with her specific set of skills. Especially considering her injury."

"Well, let's not waste time." Basira inspects the piece of paper Elias has given her. "Come along."

"Fantastic," Martin mutters, still clearly agitated.

"Calm down, Martin," Elias says, mild yet. "You'll be no good to Jon if you panic."

"Oh, shut up." Martin looks a shade concerned that he let that slip out, but he doesn't look apologetic either. "Fine, let's go."

Will rises from the chair, and meets Elias's gaze. "I'll bring him back."

"I know." Elias wears a faint smile, and steps aside to let Basira, then Martin, past; he stops Will with the lightest touch. "You've proven yourself well in your service to our mission. I know you'll do what needs to be done."

Will shakes his head in a quick motion, dismissive, and follows the others on the way out.

"Best of luck," Elias calls, with some irony, and Will allows himself the briefest resentment and mistrust in the man's direction before focusing on mentally preparing himself for the next.

* * *

Jon, admittedly, misses all the action. He's only half-jarred awake as the door is kicked open, dizzy from blood loss and the strain of Hopworth's continued abuse, and tries to scramble up as best he can at the gunshots and the sound of strained screaming. He's too dizzy, it's not as though he could run or even walk away yet, and a wave of nausea sweeps over him as he moves too fast. In the end, he just lies back down and tries to breathe.

Jon's only half-conscious when silence finally settles over the flat, and Martin's face appears above him from where he kneels. He blinks a few times to clear the fog. "You made it," he manages to deadpan.

"Oh my god, Jon," Martin says in a rush, and drops his head against Jon's shoulder, shaky and overwhelmed.

"He's dead. We should go." Basira's tone is clipped. "Someone get Jon."

"Just a minute," Martin snipes, and gingerly pulls Jon's trousers up and buttons them deliberately. "All right. Let's. Let's, yeah, let's go."

Jon isn't sure he isn't going to vomit, but he looks up past the couch to see Will Graham moving in his direction. "Hello," he says, honestly a bit loopy. "You came for me."

"Yeah," Will answers simply, and with just as little gravitas sweeps Jon into his arms. "Hospital?" he checks with Basira.

"No need, I think," Basira says. "He'll heal up fine at the Archive."

Jon laughs, short. "I can still sit at my desk."

"Jon," Martin chides, now on his feet.

Basira's not amused. "We have to go." She turns to lead the way out of the flat, and the others follow, Jon keeping his arms firmly looped around Will's neck. The car ride is awful, insofar as Martin is audibly upset and Jon just cannot muster the energy to either snipe at him or comfort him, and it's not long until they've moved Jon to a bolstered cot in his office. He sinks back into it, and breathes his first genuine breath of relief in days.

There's quiet in the room after, and Jon opens his eyes to see Will standing there. He composes himself mentally enough to speak up first. "Why did you come?"

Will doesn't hesitate. "I owed you. You know that."

"I owe you," Jon returns, mustering a bit of an edge to his tone. "Immensely. You saved Basira. You saved me."

Will shakes his head firmly. "It's not... don't give me credit for doing the right thing."

Jon shifts to prop himself up on his elbows. "We'd both be dead or worse without you."

This doesn't seem to be a conversation Will is interested in. "I had to do what I did," Will says, not making eye contact.

"And what will you do now?" The real question, that.

Will doesn't answer for a long moment. "Elias Bouchard wants me to join you at the Archive."

Jon shouldn't be surprised, but he is. "Is that a decision you're prepared to make?"

"That depends." Will hesitates. "Is it possible for me to do any good for anyone at all?"

"At the Archive?" Jon considers that. "On the whole, honestly, we look on more than we interact. We've killed various monsters, but that isn't the mission."

"You know me." Will looks him in the face. "Is it possible for me to do good?"

"Yes," Jon says without hesitation. "I can't make this decision for you, Will. All I can say is that... the Archive could use you, but it would, in fact, _use_ you."

"Everyone uses me," Will answers, and scratches his head, glances away awkwardly. "I just want an easy answer."

"There are no easy answers here," Jon says honestly. "There are no easy answers at the place you call home, or the place you used to call home." He drops back against the cot again, weary. "Hackneyed, but go where your heart leads you before someone else leads you to a place you can't escape from."

Will's expression tightens, then he lets out a brief sigh. "Right," he says. "Sorry, I, I made this about me. You – "

"I'd rather talk about you." Jon musters a faint, dark smile. "I'm going to have to talk enough about all this to Martin."

Will laughs, dry but surprised, and rubs his hands over his face. "Right," he repeats. "I... might see you again. I don't know."

"You know where to find me." It's not like Jon's going anywhere, even when his legs are back.

An awkward pause falls between them, then Will nods, clears his throat, and withdraws through the door; Basira and Martin are through the door in the next instant, Basira releasing a short sigh. "I'm sorry, he insist – "

"Don't apologize on my behalf," Martin warns Basira. "I'm not sorry." He goes to Jon's bedside and drops to a knee to be near him again, clearly making extreme efforts not to fuss too much or condescend. "How are you?"

"My head's clearer." Jon looks at Martin. "What does Peter Lukas think of all this?"

"Don't start." Martin is visibly on edge at the name. He shakes his head sharply and turns to Basira, who stands with her arms crossed. "I need to talk to him alone."

Basira's eyebrows flick up. "Why?"

"Just go," Martin retorts, then softens, just fractionally. "I'm sorry. Please."

Basira meets Jon's gaze and gives a short nod. "I'll be around," she says. "We'll get you a bell or something."

Jon laughs, abrupt but genuinely amused. "Perfect."

Basira leaves without further comment, and Martin drops his head against Jon's shoulder; the room is silent again, then Martin gets something out. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I wasn't there."

Maybe it's the general sense of ache from his healing legs to his skull that's driving him to enough distraction that he doesn't parse that immediately, but he doesn't. "What?"

Martin's voice is thick. "I couldn't leave. I couldn't leave Peter. That's why I didn't show up. And I should've been there. I – "

Jesus. Jon presses his eyes shut tightly. "I don't blame you."

"Stop." Martin is audibly trying to pull himself together with every breath. "I'm so sorry."

Jon opens his mouth to say something flippant, but hesitates before he goes on, careful. "Do what you need to do." He clears his throat. "I... I need you, here. But if what you're doing with Lukas is important – "

Martin shakes his head so firmly it cuts him off. "What they did to you. What they _tried to do_. All of that, I don't know that what I'm doing is _more_ important, I don't even know if it's anything at all, I, I."

"Don't fuss," Jon half-warns. "I'll be fine."

Martin can't take his eyes off of Jon's face. "They hurt you," he whispers.

"Yes." No point arguing that.

He can't seem to voice it. "They – "

Jon looks him in the face. He knows. "Yes."

In an instant Martin's touching his face, such a sentimental, soft gesture that it catches the breath in Jon's chest, and he aches in a wholly different way. "Hopworth is gone." Martin's voice is barely audible. "Through a door from the Spiral. He can't..."

"You need to trust me." Jon's voice comes out strained but soft. "That I can handle what happened."

"Don't try to brush this off." Martin isn't reduced to begging, now; it's as though he thinks he can tip this conversation into something more emotional and real and honest than Jon's prepared for, so long as he pours so much feeling into this moment that Jon can't resist to respond in kind. "Jon, whatever you need, I'm here."

It's working. His eyes burn, and he blinks away the pain with effort. "Are you?" he returns.

"Yes." There's so much weight to the word, more than Jon would ever expect from anyone, and he dares look Martin fully in the face. Martin looks caught, then pulls in a hurried breath. "Right. Right. I'm. I have to talk to Peter."

This is easier. "What did he have you do? What have you been doing?"

"Trying to prevent something I'm not even sure is real," Martin says, and the breath he pulls in before the next is shaky. "Trying to save you."

"I'm tougher than you think," Jon tries to say dryly, but catches a pointed look from Martin for that. He shakes his head just as pointedly. "I'll get through this."

"Not alone," Martin says; the hand that's dropped to his shoulder now moves back to his face, thumbing along his cheek. Then Martin moves in a fluid motion and kisses him, once and again, and scrambles to his feet after.

Jon props himself up on his elbows again, beyond startled, aching all over in every possible way. "Martin," he starts, but Martin shakes his head, eyes wide, and disappears through the door. Jon lets himself fall back to the cot again, exhausted, confused, and so, so very shattered.

He doesn't realize he'd fallen asleep until he opens his eyes, eyelids heavy, to see Elias standing over him.

"What?" Jon asks, perhaps too sardonic, but he may have earned it.

"I'm glad you're back," Elias answers, with the slightest smile. "That's all I came here to say."

"That's it," Jon checks, skeptical.

"We'll provide whatever you need. Take what time you need. You know all that." Elias holds his gaze. "That's it."

Maybe it's the trauma of the last few days, the strain of the last few months, the nonstop exhaustion of the last few years, but he can't bring himself to be comforted by anyone, least of all by the likes of Elias Bouchard. "Thank you," he says, stiffly.

Elias contemplates him. "You did well with Will Graham."

"You want him?" Jon exhales, and leans back again. "He won't be easy to recruit."

"He'll come to us." Elias shrugs. "There's another matter to discuss."

"What?" Jon wants out of this conversation, but unfortunately there is literally no way to run or force him out. Has there ever been, though?

"Daisy," Elias says. "You'll need her."

Why would Elias remind him of this, now, when he's so close to falling apart? "Elias, she's, you know she's – "

"Have an imagination." Elias takes out a wooden box, unlatches it, and shows Jon what's inside; two clean rib bones, two he knows were taken from him what feels like hours, minutes ago, in moments of pure agony and despair. Jon is still, resentful, terrified, for a moment, then Elias snaps the box shut and places it on his desk. "You'll figure it out."

"Right," Jon says, rigid.

"I'll see you soon, Jon."

Jon doesn't answer, and Elias leaves without another word. He closes his eyes. There's no respite. Maybe, someday, the pain will stop burning through him, the one that arcs up his spine and makes him feel inch after inch of something that isn't there. Maybe he'll find some small breath of freedom.

It's possible. Anything's possible. He knows that better than anyone.

* * *

Abigail has warmed to Will, a closing of a distance that he'd been studiously ignoring and now can't help but acknowledge. She doesn't seem happy, but she at least makes conversation, smiles, and rests beside Will on the couch as she reads and he searches on his phone for any hint of suspicions by law enforcement that they'll be captured in short order.

His paranoid reverie is broken by Abigail's head suddenly resting against his shoulder. He shifts, not wanting to jar her, and she lets out a small, barely there laugh. "Relax," she says, half a deadpan.

"I don't relax." A joke, in his own way. He can feel her smile without a single glance at her face, faint but present, much like the brief flashes of peace within their home.

"Will."

Will glances up to see Hannibal hovering in the entrance to the kitchen, and answers with a mild expression. Hannibal's mouth turns into a slight smile, and he turns to go into the kitchen. Will looks to Abigail, who shrugs and moves away, and he follows Hannibal into the kitchen with his usual wariness at the ready.

Hannibal is in good spirits, but still sharp; he's got ingredients and kitchen devices out, and that always bodes well for his mood. "Lunch," he explains. "I thought we could talk while I worked."

Will accepts that. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I wanted to know what you plan to do." Hannibal chops with his usual focus and precision. "As usual, the issue of your loyalties appears to be complicated."

Will feels his expression darken. "You're questioning my loyalty."

"I asked you not to go after Jonathan Sims," Hannibal clarifies, "and you put yourself at great risk."

"I came back fine."

"You came back with clear nerve damage, Will. Whatever Budge was capable of before his death, he hurt you." Hannibal doesn't look up from his work. "He could have killed you."

"I'm not going to apologize." Will knows he will never be sorry for saving Jonathan Sims from what he was going through. "I know I did the right thing."

The only sound in the pointed silence is Hannibal scraping the chopped vegetables into the food processor until he speaks again. "Do you mean to work for the Archive? Does your loyalty extend that far?"

Will swipes a hand over his face. "Hannibal, are you _jealous_ of the Archivist?"

Hannibal's eyebrows are raised as he meets Will's gaze. "Should I be?"

"Absolutely not," Will says flatly.

"You developed strong feelings for him over the last months."

"You don't actually think this." Will knows that just looking at him. "You're just trying to feel out whether or not I'm invested enough in the Archive to work there permanently. I can tell you I don't know if I'm going there yet."

Hannibal sighs. "Will," he begins.

Will cuts him off with a gesture. "You allowed Jonathan Sims to be captured," he says, "and I saved him. He'll be a complicated subject for us from now." He falters, hearing what left his mouth without his permission or foreknowledge belatedly, then finishes. "From now on."

Hannibal's expressionless in that way that's a telling expression in and of itself. "Why do you think I allowed him to be captured?"

There's no good answer beyond the obvious. "I just know." His throat starts to ache.

"I was attacked by Hopworth in an effort to save the others. Do you mean to blame me for the Archivist's torture?"

Will has to clear his throat hurriedly to speak. "I know that you're always playing a game of chess," he says, "whether or not I can see the board. But the glimpses I do get are true. You know that."

"And if I did?" Hannibal speaks softly, lightly, as he works on preparing the meat now. "Would that change anything for you?"

He releases an exasperated sigh. "No. You know that."

Hannibal makes a sound of interest, carrying on his easy motions making thin slices. "You see the world as it is, and you choose to observe rather than participate. Am I correct?"

This isn't the important thing right now. "Was this all a game to you, to Elias Bouchard? People were hurt, tortured, nearly a hundred people were mutilated for the Flesh's goals, was all of it a series of machinations towards, towards something I can't see yet?"

"You said it would change nothing."

"It depends." Will's jaw sets, and he presses his face into his hands. _It doesn't._ Nothing will change this loyalty of his, his unhappy happiness in this home. "Hannibal, I'm asking," he finishes, barely looking up.

"If you choose to observe, and seek to understand Elias Bouchard, there is no better place than the Magnus Institute," Hannibal says, mild still, "but I would ask you to understand that I need you by my side as well."

Will looks up, careful. "More hunting."

"The occasional chase." Hannibal holds his gaze, steady, determined. "I will share you with the Beholding if I must, but I must insist that we hunt together. It's important to me."

Strain presses through him for totally different reasons now. "Why?"

"I feel close to you." Hannibal is matter-of-fact as he gets back to work. "I cannot forget the intimacy we experienced while hunting all that time, and I will not surrender that."

Will can't look at Hannibal. "You're asking me to kill for the sake of our relationship."

"I'm asking you to acknowledge that you want to kill beside me." Hannibal's gentle enough now. "You are what you are. I am what I am. I am asking you to accept that. I am asking you to accept me. You must do that someday."

Will exhales, a short, shaky motion, and struggles for a moment with what to do before he moves across the kitchen to reach Hannibal. He steals Hannibal's hands away from his work on lunch and wraps his arms around Hannibal's neck, burying his face into his hair and against his ear; Hannibal's arms slide around his waist, the rise and fall of his chest firm against Will's

"I'll never come to terms with this," he whispers against Hannibal's skin. "Not all the time. Just some of the time."

Hannibal is silent for a moment, then speaks just as softly. "I will temper you if you temper me, Will. I just ask that you not leave me alone."

"I can't." Will tries to compose himself, but the emotion is overwhelming and embarrassing, the frustration with this loyalty, this devotion he can't break for someone who doesn't deserve it. He pulls away just enough to press a kiss to Hannibal's mouth, and accepts Hannibal's kiss in return, the silence that settles between them charged but not unhappy.

"You figured it out?"

Abigail stands in the entrance to the kitchen, the smile on her face wry. Will wants to pull away from Hannibal, but he can't, and looks away, awkward but unwilling to lose the intimacy of the moment.

Hannibal nods slightly to Abigail, the only sign of the emotion of the moment in the pulse in Hannibal's throat near Will's cheek, his heartbeat against Will's chest. "We will stay in London. Will means to work for the Archive."

"Hannibal," Will murmurs.

He can sense Hannibal's smile. "There is no point denying what you know you mean to do."

"So the plan's going ahead," Abigail says, pragmatic. "That's good. We're getting the black market paperwork?"

"Tomorrow." Hannibal sounds as pleased as he ever has. "Our new life truly begins."

Will makes a faint sound of disbelief, and closes his eyes.

He doesn't have to say he loves them. He's more than proven it. They know.


End file.
